“It’s too high!” I scream down to my brother Jack, who’s sat in the fresh fluffy snow below me. He had just jumped off the massive metal storage unit planted in our front lawn and was trying his hardest to coax me to do the same. “It’s lower than it looks. I promise!” he hollers back. I was skeptical, I creep closer to the edge “On the count of three you jump! Ok?” he shouts and without waiting for an answer begins to count.
“One…” I close my eyes
“Two…” I bend my legs
“Three!” I soar, it feels like I’m falling for an eternity, until. THUMP! I landed in the fresh powder. When I open my eyes, my brother is smiling eagerly. “See, that was fun wasn’t it!” I smile back “You were right it wasn’t as high as I thought. Let’s do it again!
I hold my dad’s chunky iPhone aiming the camera at my bedroom door. A scratchy drumroll plays from outside the room right before Jack bursts in holding my pink plastic guitar, the source of the drumroll. An upbeat tune begins to stream from its speakers as my brother dances along. I can’t control the chorus of giggles that fall from my mouth. He’s too funny.
I sit with Jack in the back seat of our mom’s grey Audi on our way to visit grandma in New York. I share headphones with him as he scrolls through the bright blue iPod he just got for his birthday. He switches the songs between Eminem, Kanye West, and a variety of other artists I don’t recognize. He recites all sorts of knowledge about the music, he’s so smart. Eventually, Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne plays, and I fall in love with it. Jack lets me play the song for the last three hours of the drive.
Jack just finished his freshman year of high school, and my parents decided our local public school hadn’t given him the support he needed. He got accepted into a boarding school called Eagle Hill on the condition that he attend a few weeks of summer school to make up for his lacking grades. After three weeks my mom gets a call, it’s Jack. She doesn’t look happy; I’m asked to leave the room. That weekend my brother came home and never returned to Eagle Hill. Everything changed after that call.
Everyone’s screaming. I don’t even know what they’re fighting about. The same thing happened that morning, and yesterday, and the day before that. Eventually my mom throws Jack out of the house. A couple hours later he returns his knuckles are shredded, when I went into our barn the next day there’s a big hole in the dry wall speckled with splattered blood. He was scary.
My parents and I return from dinner, my brother didn’t want to come. The kitchens a mess. There are little white air soft pellets covering the floor. When I look out the window our back patio is piled with smashed furniture, I think it looks like its set up for a bonfire. I walk in the living room, trash and pillow stuffing is scattered across the floor. My brother comes out of his room yelling.
It’s thanksgiving. I wake up to screaming in the kitchen, its my dad and brother, something about this fight is different. I listen trying to figure out what the argument’s about this time. I think my brother stole some money. Something shatters and the door slams, couple minutes later I walk into the kitchen, my mom’s picking up broken mirror shards and my dads on the phone with the police. Jack is hiding in the woods when the police get here, they stay for an hour or so but can’t really do anything. Once they leave, he returns and begins yelling “The next time you call the cops on me I’ll kill myself and take all of you with me!”
My mom, dad, and I sit on the couch. We just found some old tapes of when I was little, my dad used to film everything. We watch old Christmas mornings, birthday parties, and visits with my cousins. We watch a video of the first time I met my brother. In the hospital Jack sits on a chair that’s way to big for him, he’s four. My dad places me on his lap.
“Give her a kiss, Jack.” My mom calls
He’s so nervous that he’s gonna hurt me that he kisses the air. Everyone laughs. I turn away from the TV and look at my mom. She’s crying. We all are mourning the loss of someone who’s not dead.
from 1702 until 1860, English penal laws prevented Irish Catholics from establishing schools or hearing Mass. They went underground, with hidden “hedge schools” and “hedge Mass.”
The biting Mayo wind cuts through wool,
scrapes our bare ankles as we hunch
in this old quarry, half-listen
to Master Joyce as he tells of Cuchulain.
He switched to that from sums, to hold
our attention, but I’m watching the hawk
that circles above, thinking how we are all rabbits –
if the soldiers catch us at lessons,
could we end up in Churchtown Gaol? Da says
I must study, leave the guns to the elders
and Sean, who turned 16 last week.
He says learning is rebellion too – if the King
doesn’t want us to read and write, to hear God’s Word,
then by God we’ll learn! Easy for him.
Da never had to sit on sharp stone,
listen to old Joycey who’s forgetting his thoughts.
He stops, looks behind himself, scared coney,
then mumbles and draws lessons in the dust.
Bridie and Maureen are good students,
Frances more scared still than Master Joyce.
Joe and I trade winks, shift our sore rumps.
I think of the bread and cheese,
Aunt Rose’s weak beer stashed for my lunch.
The morning spills light over the quarry tip.
Shadows slide along the walls like spies,
like informers who lurk in our pubs, our market,
willing to trade bloody English coin
for a neighbor’s life.
Image: Artist unknown, at The Fine Art Society, New Bond Street, London
The sound of the lawn mower caught Ethel’s attention as she was having her morning coffee. She looked out the front bay window, squinting her eyes to try and make out the fellow cutting her grass. He couldn’t be her son- this fellow was tall and string bean lean, wearing a Kelly- green Eagles cap. Pepper, her brownish cocker spaniel, barked to be picked up.
“Ok, dear, let’s look out the screen door and thank our visitor.”
Ethel waved at the older gentleman, frantically trying to get his attention as he methodically paced the lawn in neat rows as he walked behind the gas mower.
“You-Hoo!” she called. “Landscaper!”
The stranger finally noticed the woman and shut down the noisy engine.
“Why, it’s your Uncle Andy!” she said to Pepper. “Andy! I haven’t seen you in ages! Where have you been?”
“Oh, I’ve been dead, sis,” he called back. “Figured I would give you a hand. No problem…No problem at all. Does me good to get a little exercise.” With that he pulled out a white hanky from his back pocket and wiped his sweaty brow. “It sure is getting warm out here.”
“Don’t you overdo it! I’ll bring you some lemonade to help you cool off a bit,” she offered.
“Much obliged, sis,” he replied, starting up the mower again.
Ethel found the full pitcher of ice-cold lemonade in the refrigerator and dropped a pair of ice cubes into a tall drinking glass, which she filled to the brim. She quickly walked it to the front of the house, where she opened the screen door and called for Andy again. But as soon as she opened the door he vanished into thin air, mower and all, like wispy smoke sent to the heavens above.
“Oh, that’s right…I forgot,” she mumbled to herself, placing the glass of lemonade on a small tray table on the porch.
She scurried back inside the door, chasing Pepper in. “Get in there, you little devil! Where do you think you’re going?”
As soon as she shut the screen door her brother reappeared on the lawn with the mower, just as he had been before.
“Andy, I left a cold drink on the porch for you. Come and get it,” she called out.
“I will. I want to finish up here, then I’ll come up and sit a spell. It sure is warm for April!”
********
Later in the day Ethel was in the kitchen feeding Pepper supper, when her son came in with two bags of groceries.
“Hello, Mom,” he greeted, kissing her on the cheek. “How are you today? That new screen door is squeaking. I’ll find the WD-40 and fix it before I leave. “
He put the groceries on the kitchen counter. “The TV dinners were on sale. I stocked you up pretty well. chicken, roast beef, meat loaf…”
“Thank you, sweetie. It beats cooking, especially since there’s only one to cook for.”
“Listen, Mom, I was going to cut the grass this Saturday but I see it’s already been cut…”
“Yes, your Uncle Andy stopped by and took care of it. It was good to see him again.”
Paul stopped and stared at the tile floor while his mother put the groceries away.
“Mom, did you say ‘Uncle Andy’?”
“Yes? Why?”
“But Mom, Uncle Andy died over thirty years ago. I was just a kid when it happened.”
“I know, dear, but he insisted on cutting the grass,” she said, putting a carton of eggs in the refrigerator. “I warned him not to overdo it.”
Uh-oh, thought the son. Is Mom losing it? He knew she’d been depressed since his father’s untimely death last winter. She seemed to be better, a bit more cheerful, like the old Mom he knew and loved. He had worried about Mom needing physical help as she aged. She used a cane, but she was doing pretty well for an eighty-four- year- old woman, considering everything. He never thought he would have to worry about her mental acuity. She had always been as sharp as a tack. However, Alzheimer’s did run in the family. His Aunt Gail suffered from the disease up until her death.
“Mom, did you ever have a chance to look over those brochures I brought over last week?” Paul asked gently.
“You mean the ones for that assisted living facility?” she asked. “Paul, I’m sure it’s a very nice place. And I appreciate your concern. But I can’t see myself going there. What would I do all day? Play bingo and bocce ball with a bunch of old people?”
Same Mom. She never did think of herself as old. She loved her Bingo back in the day. He had encouraged her to try the senior center downtown. They offered all kinds of activities to keep busy, including Bingo. She could get a hot meal every day, as opposed to eating TV dinners. Most of all, she would have company, someone other than Pepper to talk to.
“Mom, don’t you get lonely here by yourself? At least at Golden Horizons you wouldn’t have to worry about being alone, or taking care of the house, or cooking, or the lawn, for that matter. Everything is done for you. Now that Jason left for college it’s going to be harder to keep up repairs here.”
“I’m not lonely, dear. I’ve got Pepper. And there are people always stopping by. Plus, if I went into that retirement community- or whatever you call it- what would I do with poor Pepper? We have been through too much together to be apart now. Wherever I go, he goes too.”
“No problem. They allow dogs in the apartments,” Paul answered. “What’s wrong, Mom? You still look upset.”
“Paul, I don’t want to leave my house,” she stated firmly. “Neither does Pepper. It’s where I lived with your father for sixty years. I don’t want to leave the memories behind. My furniture… There’s no way we could ever cram three stories worth of memories into a small apartment.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “You call them memories; I call it junk. A lot of this stuff, especially in the basement and attic, you don’t use anymore. And that’s the other thing: the steps. God forbid, Mom, I come over and find that you fell down the stairs. How do you think I would feel?”
“Oh, Paulie, don’t be silly. I’ve been up and down those stairs hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of times in my life,” she replied.
“But you were younger then, Mom.”
“I wear the button you got me,” she insisted. “The ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’ button. I’m really okay. You don’t understand, dear…the memories are here. And it’s not just the furniture. We lived here, all together. We had Sunday dinners and cook-outs with your Aunt Gail and Uncle Andy. We had family reunions here. All those memories from christenings, anniversaries, celebrations and holidays. Don’t you remember every Christmas- opening the presents in the living room, packed with family, the house filled with the aroma of turkey? I don’t want to leave those memories behind. Maybe that’s why they are coming back. Maybe, if I leave…they will disappear too.”
“You’ll always carry those memories in your heart. It’s just that, sometimes we need to move on with life,” Paul said.
“It’s only been four months, dear, “she reasoned. “We all grieve in our own way. There is no time frame when it comes to grief. I’m not ready to move on yet.”
“When is the last time you left the house since Pop died?” he asked. “I bet, other than going out on the porch to sit, the answer is never.”
“But I don’t need to leave the house, dear,” she replied. “They come to me.”
“If you mean the paper boy, the grocery delivery and the mailman, then yes. I just don’t want you to isolate yourself from the world.”
All the same, Paul decided to make an appointment with her primary care physician, Dr. Langdon, for a wellness check-up. He could run some tests and find out if his mother’s cognitive ability was slipping. Maybe he could also persuade her into giving the assisted living facility a try. Older people tend to listen to their doctor, even more than family, so why not let her doc make the tough decision for her. Leave her house and move into a place where she can be looked after – doctor’s orders.
********
The next morning, bright and early, after a liquid gold sunrise explosion over the eastern horizon, Ethel hoisted Pepper into her arms and looked out the bay window. There was an older woman on her hands and knees in the front garden, planting spring flowers around the pond. Ethel immediately recognized the familiar face.
“Gail!” she called out the screen door.
“Oh, good morning, Ethel! How do you like the marigolds? Pretty, aren’t they? I think the orange and yellow look nice together. Brightens up the place, doesn’t it?”
“It sure does,” Ethel agreed. “It’s so thoughtful of you. I would give you a big hug if I could.”
“I know,” Gail sighed. “We used to hug all the time. I miss that. But those are the rules.”
“Gail, how’s Edgar doing?”
“He’s fine,” she replied, shielding her eyes from the intense sun.
“Ask him to come see me sometime.”
“I will, dear. Sit out on the porch some evening and you never know- He might just come by. It’s getting nice out now. The air is fresh and clean. Everything is waking up and coming back to life again.”
********
This interaction with deceased relatives continued all summer long. For instance, Uncle Eddie showed up one day to repair the broken rain spout which overflowed after a thunderstorm. Cousin Marie dropped by one morning, leaving a basket of fresh sweet corn on the doorstep. It seemed like everyone was chipping in to help Ethel. She never knew who might visit each day. Sometimes Andy or Gail would come by just to say hello and check on her welfare. Sometimes a long, lost relative from as far back as the colonial times would appear, introduce themselves and make acquaintances.
All the while Paul was at his wits end trying to figure out who was helping his mother all summer. Probably some handyman she had hired. All she would reveal was “Oh, Aunt Jennie brought that homemade marmalade” or “Your great-great-great grandfather Thomas stopped over recently to show me the new white horse he just purchased.” Funny, Paul still did all of the inside work, like changing lightbulbs, but the outside chores were always completed by…someone.
He had to admit- the once old, crumbling property that his father left sure looked spic and span, even the new paint job on the porch-supposedly done by late nephew Harold, spruced up the place like it had never been before.
********
Summer was winding down. It was getting dark earlier in the evenings, and there was a chill in the night air, a sure sign that fall was just around the corner. Pretty soon the dried, crispy leaves would begin to pile up on the lawn; the cooler breeze would unclothe the trees, scattering spinning leaves and pieces of tree branches up and down the once leafy-green avenue.
Starting in September, right around Labor Day, no one visited anymore. Funny how Ethel had seemed to take the ghostly visits for granted. Now she was surprised when a late relative did not show up to visit. Maybe her ghostly relatives went into hibernation for the upcoming winter? She longed to see them just one more time before she left her house for Golden Horizons. She’d reluctantly agreed to admission after Dr Langdon diagnosed her with early Dementia. Until there was an opening, the community social worker, Miss Wilson, was dropping by every week to check on her welfare. Everything was set. Now, all they waited for was an open bed.
How sad to be leaving her home. Even her memories would soon fade away.
They all thought her ghostly visits were a part of her illness. Delusions. Long ago memories resurfacing one last time. Funny how she could remember her past memories yet struggled to recall what she had for breakfast that morning. Even she began to wonder if all those interactions were just her imagination.
Real or imagined, there was one person she missed, one person who failed to visit, one person who she thought had forgotten her. That is until one frosty morning…
The day started like any other. Ethel and Pepper were up at the crack of dawn, only there wasn’t much of a sunrise to see. A cold, drizzly rain engulfed the little town, turning the early morning into a damp, miserable mess. Ethel had developed a cough and a fever; even poor Pepper sneezed now and then. Ethel made herself a cup of hot tea with lemon and honey, sure it would ease her sore throat. She thought about calling Paul at work, asking him to take her to the doctor for a check-up, but she didn’t want to bother him; It’s only a cold, she thought. She could shake the sudden chills in her warm bed with Pepper. That was the plan: spend the day in bed and rest.
It was then she heard a faint knock on the door. Standing on the porch was Edgar, her late husband, looking very much alive.
“Edgar!” she yelled. “Look who it is, Pepper! It’s your Daddy!”
She forgot herself and opened the screen door to hug him, and he vanished. She closed the door and there he was again, smiling under his trademark, familiar fishing hat.
“Are you ready to go?” he asked.
“Ready to go?” she repeated.
“Yes. Ready to go with me.”
“Where are we going, Edgar?”
“To Heaven,” he replied.” This morning, I got word to come and get you.”
“I can’t open the screen door because then you’ll be gone again,” Ethel claimed.
“I can open the door from the outside,” Edgar replied.
“Can Pepper come too?”
“Of course. All dogs go to Heaven. Hello, Pepper old boy! Did you miss me?” Pepper sniffed at the screen door, wagging his tail as he recognized Edgar’s scent.
Ethel hesitated a moment. Even though she missed her late husband, even though she couldn’t wait to give him a hug, she was apprehensive. Why did she feel this was all an illusion? Was it her mind again? How could Edgar be standing on the porch, talking to her through the screen door? She attended his funeral. She was there when he had the heart attack. She was with him, by his bedside, when he died in the hospital.
Edgar opened the creaky screen door. “Just step out, sweetheart. Trust me. Everything will be alright.”
As Ethel stepped onto the wet porch, with little Pepper in her arms, the misty rain suddenly stopped. The sun came out and it was spring again. Gail’s marigolds were alive again. Butterflies and hummingbirds flew all around the garden and the pond. The warmth of the sun dried the air.
“Let’s sit down, just like old times,” he said, leading her to the rocking chairs. “Now you’ll never have toleave home. We can sit on the porch for eternity.”
Ethel and Edgar sat there, rocking and talking, with so much to discuss, so much to catch up on, while Pepper nestled in Ethel’s lap, all warm and toasty.
Just like old times.
********
Later that afternoon Paul drove down his mother’s street. He had not seen her in a few days. He wanted to install that window in the screen door, something he had been meaning to do for a while, before it turned colder. He was glad it had stopped raining, surprised the weather had turned so unseasonably mild, like a taste of early summer.
He also wanted to tell her the news: a bed was now open at Golden Horizons. It was time to move. He planned to clean out the old place, hoping to have it on the market by next spring.
He parked in front of the house and noticed Ethel sitting on the porch with Pepper on her lap.
Paul walked up the front steps and onto the porch. Shame to wake her. Poor lady was sleeping so soundly. Pepper was sound asleep too. Ethel had such a beautiful smile on her face. He bent down to kiss her on the cheek and noticed how cold she was. The tears rolled down Paul’s face. His mother passed away while still at home, just as she wished.
Ethel was watching nearby. Andy, Gail, and Edgar…they were all there with her. Even Pepper had gone along for the ride.
********
The following spring, Paul was cleaning his mother’s house, getting the old place ready for the sale. He took a few pieces of her antique furniture as a remembrance. The rest of the relics he would sell at auction.
It was mild for early April. The annuals were already coming up in the old garden. Paul opened all the windows to air the musty place out. He put the screens in the doors and immediately noticed a refreshing breeze blowing in through the screen door. Paul and Jason worked in the living room, gathering a box full of China and other dinner ware.
“Ok, let’s carry this junk out to the car before we get the other stuff,” ordered Paul. He picked up the box and started out.
Suddenly, Paul stood transfixed at the front door, looking out the screen door.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” Jason asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I have,” Paul gasped. “Your grandmother. She’s working in the garden with Aunt Gail.”
“Dad, Grandma died last year, remember?” Jason replied.
“I see her through the screen door,” insisted Paul. “Look out there…Don’t you see her?”
Jason put his box down and went to the door, looking out.
“Nobody out there. Not a soul.”
When Paul opened the screen door to look for himself, they were gone. He rubbed his eyes. In that instant he remembered how his mother claimed to see dead relatives in the yard. He thought she was losing her mind. Was this stress or something supernatural?
Just to play it safe, Paul took the house off the market that afternoon. Just like his mother, he wasn’t ready to move on just yet.
Throughout the winter, Wednesdays meant quiz night. Anna and her husband were stalwarts, but other players only committed to certain dates that did not clash with theatre trips and bridge clubs. As these times elderly reserves were called up, Malcom’s doddery steps aided by two sticks belied a brain still quick as a darting fish.
The pubs they played in varied ambience. In more genteel venues, diners babbled in the background, but sports bars meant mid-week soccer matches on Sky and raucous billiard games in the back room, their combined racket causing quizzers to cup ears and grimace to catch the questions.
‘The Legion’ was the last authentic drinking pub in the town. No food except crisps and pork scratchings. Its only concession to changing times and tastes, was a glass of eye watering wine.
Their team would duck under the flight path of a darts match, ignore comments about ‘nerds or swats ‘and make their way to the function room, chill as a meat locker where, huddled in coats, they cantered through the quiz and did not linger after wards.
However, playing in this venue had one advantage – Ben, who graced their team because this was his regular ‘boozer.’ They all agreed he would be an asset had he been able to commit full-time but as a train driver “I never know what shift I’m on.”
Nevertheless, his presence guaranteed a win, for Ben possessed an uncanny knowledge of both Geography and Maths, subjects that were cavities in the team’s own knowledge. Even before the question was completed, he had scribbled the answer down. Other subjects, such as history, art, music, he simply laid his pen down, head and neck retracting into his parka collar like a tortoise, signalling that he considered such subjects too girly for him, and rolled a cigarette for the break instead.
But Anna had a more personal reason for enjoying these infrequent encounters. In the break, it became an unspoken ritual that they both grabbed more drinks and sloped outside to the ‘smoking area.’ Catching up with each other’s lives, there was genuine interest on either side. Sitting with his long legs extended, still shod in Doc Martins, he would courteously exhale smoke away from her. Together they would ponder the conundrum of him finding time from his commitments to start dating. “I need to change me job “he would grimace. “It’s ruining the social life.”
‘You’d be a catch ‘Anna would reassure, recalling her single girlfriends who frequently lamented the poor stock of available men in the area. Ben would receive her compliment with a grin and a shake of his head. The young man was completely oblivious of his personal attributes. Kindness warmed his eyes but there was also a twinkle that promised mischief.
“I’m a bit of rough” he would reply, “too much of a geezer.” But the women she knew were tired of men who ate halloumi and did not know their way around a car engine. Ben was a hybrid. He possessed good manners that verged on the courtly. He was raising his son solo whilst the mum was off ‘finding herself’ somewhere. Yet at the same time he had oil under his nails and could rewire a cooker.
Break over, he stubbed out his cigarette, they returned inside, leaving unsolved the complex algorithm of his life which they would no doubt tackle again.
Anna was a member of a mums group who had initially met at the primary school gates and formed a friendship that had outlived their kids peeling off to various secondary schools. Once a month they left husbands overseeing homework and had an adventure. So far, they had sampled psychic fairs, cocktail bars, and musicals.
“Drag club” Stephanie pronounced handing a flier to each of the five women. “It’s in Dartford, apparently the best in the UK.” In silence each of the women peered at the image of various drag artists posturing for the camera, each adorned in an outrageous costume, bearing even more outrageous names.
“Brillant “cried Anna “I’m in.”
The sheer novelty value appealed to her. She had little experience of drag culture. Knew it had become mainstream in metropolitan areas. However, it had failed to sashay into this parochial town.
Anna thought back to a particular day out with a gay friend whose first love was London. He had greeted her at Victoria train station with “I’ve a surprise for you.” This always cued that he had found some peculiarity as he tramped the city, camera in hand. She was led through the labyrinthine streets of Soho. “Ah this is it,” stopping before a shop with a large display window.
At first glance, it looked like an outlet for prom attire but, on further scrutiny, there was something out of kilter with the displays. Dresses were oversized and over-the-top. Sequins and glitter illuminated the frontage. The mannequins were larger than those found in the women’s department of M&S. The wigs were bouffant. Their makeup neon. She was mesmerised by a pair of diamante stilettos. Shining Cinderella slippers that were significantly larger. Suddenly the answer clicked in her head. “It’s a drag queen shop.” She had laughed with delight at the sheer novelty of it.
The rest of the group looked at each other whilst Stephanie refilled their glasses. At length, a look of devilment spread amongst them. They were all game. Except Emma who hesitated “I don’t think Keith would approve.” Keith was her cover for anything that made her uncomfortable. In truth, her husband encouraged his wife to be bolder. “Oh, come on “her friends chorused, until she reddened, took a gulp of wine, and mumbled “OK.”
That Friday they shoehorned themselves into Anna’s mini cooper. A bottle of prosecco was produced by Stephanie. She also passed out plastic flutes saying, “No swigging, we’ve got standards.”
They had all taken particular care with their appearance tonight. Even Emma had sloughed off her jeans and stepped into a dress. Car head lamps and streetlights picked up and refracted their glittery tops. The inference was that no one was being out sequined by any drag queen tonight.
Anna, the designated driver for the evening, felt like the grown up as giggles fizzed around her. She was also the navigator, sensing her friends, tipsy on prosecco, would probably give conflicting directions at best. So, she had keyed the post code into her sat nav muttering “This will be a challenge,” under her breath, knowing Dartford to be a Badlands of one way systems, unmarked roads, and impatient drivers.
In fact, it only took two turns around the one way system with Anna shouting “Look for the venue “as even the sat nav became confused as to the precise location. The women obediently craned out the windows until catching sight of the night club’s pink neon sign ‘Barbiez,’ all chorused “there,” necessitating an abrupt slam on the brakes and sharp left turn that incurred the wrath of the driver behind.
The security guards on the doors were solid as a pair of Welsh dressers and waved them through with grins and an “Enjoy yourselves girls.” Entering the club the women collectively gasped.
Pink walls were adorned with the promotional photos of resident and visiting drag acts. Four pink chandeliers bloomed in each corner. Chairs were unholstered in pink plush whilst the frames and tables were gilded as if Midas had touched them. Even the carpet seemed rouged. The performance area was delineated by pink floor lights. A curtain of golden streamers concealed backstage. “It’s Barbie’s dream nightclub” they giggled.
Her friends struck out for the bar, leaving Anna to select a table. Past experience had taught her to avoid the sightline of performers, particularly comedians who enjoyed banter with the punters. Since there was no stage as such, Anna knew these acts would breach the fourth wall and work the room. She selected a banquette that would accommodate all the women, backing onto the wall and softly lit by a pink glow. She hoped it would afford some camouflage.
“We’re having cocktails “her friends flourished lurid concoctions with risqué names. “A virgin one for you dear.” She was handed a glass of liquid the colour of something Dr Jekyll might have downed.
Drink unlatched their tongues further. Something in this surreal atmosphere encouraged them to park job niggles and concerns over kids’ grades. Instead, superficial chatter and schoolgirl giggles bounced around the table.
The club began to fill for the 8.30 show time. Anna watched the parties of raucous young women crowned with tiaras and garlanded with sashes that declared ‘Hen Do.’ Gay men in tight clothes that proclaimed buff bodies had the comfortable air of regulars. With office parties, the women who seemed to have come on a dare. The men, declining the camp concoctions in favour of pints, talked football and motors, their body language screaming ‘straight men.’ Anna smiled to herself, “They’ll certainly be a target.”
Flashing stage lights signalled it was show -time. “I just don’t know what to expect “squeaked Emma, as if attack dogs were about to be unleashed. “I’ll protect you from the scary ladies “Stephanie patted her arm.
“And now,“ a disembodied male voice announced the compère.
Miss Chief, burst through the golden curtain to strike an exaggerated red carpet pose. Her make-up was icing thick and her hair Marilyn bouffant. A pneumonic figure was trussed into a red sequinned dress accessorised by perilous red stilettos. “She’s got breasts” Emma gasped. “We’ll explain later,” her friends hissed. Her outfit determined her gait. Miss Chief skittered forward like a geisha, arms akimbo for balance.
Miss Chief warmed up the room with ease. Mic in hand she stalked the tables for prey. Teasing brides to be with comments so close to the knuckle that Anna’s table drew a sharp in takes of breath but then gave way to laughter. Miss Chief seemed to relish hecklers. Attempts at banter by lager emboldened, straight men, were shot down by her cross bow responses. Within 15 minutes she had the crowd warmed up nicely, giving them a taste of the rest of the show.
What transpired was, for the most part a parade of exaggerated femininity. Cher and Tina Turner lookalikes either belted out or lip-synced to classic power ballads. There was a ‘Barbie’ of course, pink coutured apart from her blue jokes that would have had Martell speed-dialling for the lawyers. There were grotesques with absurd costumes that seemed to give them licence for ribald routines. Some acts achieved a female beauty, blessed with good bone structure, their makeup was water colour rather than oil paint. “They have better legs than us “the friends agreed.
The evening peaked with the headline act, ‘Misstique.’ She was introduced by the compère as the regional winner of the ‘Queen of Queens’ contest, the compère mock spitting in jealousy.
In a certain light, and after a brace of beers, Misstique would have had many men trying their luck. Her female impersonation was uncanny. Shoulder length titan hair, her striking eyes were emphasised by retro up- tick eyeliner. A slick of colour on her lips was all the assistance her regular features and high cheek bones required to transform her into a beauty.
A slender figure was swathed in a black satin gown with a daring side slit that revealed long and shapely legs. she was pure old Hollywood glamour. Rita Hayward in Gilda. She began her act singing in that breathy style of such icons. The audience was beguiled. Suddenly her act switched gears as she began strutting amongst the tables. Her little girl voice and studied innocence were at odds with the double entendre she scattered amongst the crowd. Feigning bewilderment at the audience’s raucous reaction, often accompanied by a wide eyed” What have I said? “, chided them with a mock shocked “You are a wicked audience.”
Men, straight or gay, were ambushed by her. She would plonk herself uninvited on their laps, ruffle their hair, croon a few bars of song to them. The gay men played along, joined in the singing, whereas the straight men became statues at this attack on their masculinity. They tried to appear nonchalant, but their mouths were wrenched into artificial merriment whilst their eyes sent out distress signals. Their obvious discomfort elicited belly laughs from Anna and her friends, who soon regretted their lack of volume control. The sound caught Misstique’s attention like a predator. Their banquette had hitherto worked well as cover. Now they were rumbled. It was their turn to bear the brunt of her attention. Her eyes fixed on them and gleamed. A smile crept across her red lips which she positively licked at the sight of them. “Please don’t pick on us, please don’t pick on us “Emma audibly beseeched.
But she was already enroute to their table. Her long legs model strutting in stilettos, which did not hamper her progress like some acts, but inexorably propelled her towards them.
“Well, what do we have here?” she turned throwing the question into the audience. “Drag club virgins, I’m thinking.” The crowd laughed, complicit now in her teasing. She addressed Stephanie “Long time since you’ve been called that, I’ll bet.” Stephanie giggled in agreement, rather relishing the attention. But she had learned to her cost from their night at the comedy club, not to not try and outsmart the ‘turn.’
Misstique was not as acidic as some of her sister acts. She teased the women but did not torment. She had certainly got the measure of their party. Anna wondered if this summing groups up in seconds, gauging how far to go, was a skill learned with experience. Observation seemed a honed sensibility too. “Giving the sequins a night out, I see “. She brandished a sparkly cardigan shed by one of the women early in the evening.
The cocktails worked as an anaesthetic, numbing the worst of their discomfort at finding themselves in the spotlight. Anna, however, had never felt so sober in her life. Which was why she was able to observe the drag queen with such clarity. All the previous acts that evening had been slightly removed from scrutiny. Laughing so as not to appear impolite, Anna took the opportunity to study Misstique’s face. She loved physical beauty in both male and female form and took pleasure in studying her physiognomy. It was her eyes, though, that seemed to betray a hint of familiarity. It was not just the colour but the personality that peeped out from its liner and mascara disguise.
The voice, too, began to resonate. The pitch was lightened, but by not exaggerating the campiness, there were hints of a timbre like a familiar musical refrain that she recognised. It was Ben. Her own expression remained poker player calm. There was no tell on her face to show that she knew him. She continued to giggle with her friends at his antics. Ben, for his part, remained sanguine. He did not misstep, continued playing up to the group of women, and basking in the audience’s guffaws. But when he was through toying with them, he made to move away and, at that point he briefly looked at Anna and winked. It was the smallest of acknowledgements that would not be challenged by the other women, fuddled with drink. In return, Anna gave a nod, subtle as an auction bid.
On the journey home, close on 2 a.m., her friends, their clubbing days consigned to a time before adult responsibility, dozed off, heads lolling against the rests. Anna was free to mull over what was, for her, the apex of the evening. She had revealed nothing to the group. With secrets she was closed as the confessional. Even amongst these close knit friends, she was entrusted with secrets of an affair, a covert bank account and a gambling habit.
Anna was not offended at Ben’s circumspection. A pub smoking area could hardly be considered a safe place for unlocking secrets. She assumed that only the drag circuit knew, and privacy was a given in their closed circle.
The Ben she knew ceased to exist inside the club. With the final slick of lipstick Misstique burst out with a ‘Ta –da.’ And for a few hours this was an alternative world, where acts and audience alike were complicit in this grown up make believe of glamour and sequins.
It must be easier, she thought, for gay men, for whom drag was an accepted part of being out and proud. But she assumed Ben was straight, and for these men, there was still a social stigma. The whole concept of cross dressing confused. Society likes binaries. Gay or straight. It was uncomfortable with grey areas.
Whilst inside, Anna might Whoop at Ben’s spirit, admiring anyone who was slightly subversive, slightly counterculture. Envying his ability to slough off the banal and step into the razzle dazzle of a second persona that was clearly a hoot.
However, she also knew that this second persona would clash with his job as train driver. The railways considered themselves old school blue collar workers. Their politics were militant, their opinions fixed. Grudgingly obeying the equal rights legislation, they had admitted a few female drivers to their ranks, but they were expected to butch up in order to survive the bruising banter.
Similarly, she believed that in his local pub, divulging his alter ego would un-stopper a prejudice that would manifest in eye watering teasing under the guise of friendly joshing.
Yet Ben had found a way to successfully partition his life. It was, she considered as she pulled off the motorway onto the A roads, a creative outlet as much as anything. Valid as acting or painting. Drag queens were, in effect, their own creation. The planning of new outfits, tweaking of the act, must be a counterpoint to the tedium of Ben’s job, staring ahead as the train devoured the same rail track, day after day.
The following week Anna entered the pub, feeling as if she was walking on quicksand. She was fearful that her pub quiz ally might now distance himself from fear of disclosure. However, as she settled at the team table she heard “Alright Anna?” Ben pint in hand, bestowed his familiar warm greeting.
At the break, cigarette in mouth champing to be lit, their usual drinks in hand, he inclined his head in his usual manner towards the smoking area.
Seated, she found herself stumbling over words as if she was the one with the secret. They discussed, as usual world events, a preamble to more personal subject matter. However, they seemed to be skirting around the revelations of the previous Friday. Anna was resolved not to bring up the subject herself.
“So, you’ve met my alter-ego “he said suddenly, breaking the stalemate. Her nervousness stood down. “Of all the bars” she joked, and he chuckled. “You were gorgeous though.” “Aren’t I always? “He primped, fluttering his eyelashes. She giggled. “I’ll take questions now “he said. Over the weekend a screed of questions had grown in Anna’s mind.
He was unabashed and answered, frankly. Giving a thumbnail sketch of his drag queen’s evolution. The idea of his persona came first. Online tutorials teaching makeup application presented a challenge. There were many errors with lipstick and eyebrows. Anna thought back to her teenage efforts at make-up application. Never particularly artistic, it had been a matter of trial and error, which in an all-girls school generated sniggers.
Swerving away from parodying a woman, he wanted a more subtle look that paid tribute to the Hollywood beauties of the 40s and 50s, whom he regarded as the apotheosis of female beauty.
The clothes were trickier. He swerved the drag queen shops with them over the top costumes. Electing instead to trawl the internet for actual women’s wear. Multiple styles and sizes were ordered. The parcels were discreetly stashed onto of his wardrobe in suitcases to elude the inquisitive eyes of his son.
Then came the development of an act. Many days were spent pondering her name. The selection of which helped to develop her character. Alone in the house he rehearsed the routine diligently. When he finally felt he had an act “I took the plunge and found an open mic at a drag bar in Croydon.”
“Croydon?” Anna said inquiringly because the town was in the next county. “It’s miles away, less chance of being recognised.” “Of course,” she nodded understanding the need for subterfuge. “I would have been terrified,“ she admitted, in a tone that paid tribute to his chutzpah. “I was.“ he confessed – dragging up in the gents’ toilet, ducking into cubicles when a customer came in to relieve themselves of beer.
A couple of shots gave Ben just enough courage to step onto the stage. In fact, he found that once the persona was donned, he felt emboldened. All his doubts and fears evaporated as the carefree character of Misstique possessed him.
He found the audience benevolent and very forgiving. They laughed obligingly at his gags, enjoyed his interaction with them, and heartily applauded when his 10 minutes was up.
“No turning back after that. I was hooked. “He studied the other turns on the circuit, refined his act. Ben learned that his USP was his prettiness. His homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood that was a refreshing contrast to the grotesques. In time he got a stiletto hold into the better clubs. Grew a following with the aid of socials.
Crossing off her mental list of questions, Anna came to what she considered more existential inquiries. “When did you first want to do it?’” she asked, curious but not wanting to seem too intrusive. He thought for a while “Dunno. It was just an itch I had to scratch.” He seemed to need to qualify his answer “I’m not gay. Some drags are, but some, like me, prefer women.”
Ben explained that the real obstacle to finding a partner lay in this second life. “And I’m not prepared to compromise it.” “I think you’ll find women are a lot broader minded than men” she replied. She still considered Ben a catch. In fact, this secret life offered a richer dimension to his personality. A mischief that many women with mundane past relationships would actually relish and become complicit with his secret.
The break was over. “Come and see me again? “He asked “I’ve got a six month residency at the club.” Then, in a subtle appeal for discretion he added “just you and a plus one, I’ll give you a tour.” “It’s a date “she said and got to her feet. Doubting she could entice her biker bloke to the club, she was certain her sister would relish the opportunity. She lived in London, so was far enough away that should there be any slips of the tongue, the gossip would be unlikely to reach their hometown.
“Shipwash!! Answer the bloomin door. Where for heaven’s sake are you boy?”
Head butler Saunterton had no patience for the incompetent Shipwash, who was never around when needed most. “Shipwash!!”
Shipwash heard the second call and rolled off the upstairs daybed. He had planned to polish silver all morning but became weary after sweeping, dusting, and discretely chatting with the chambermaid. He straightened his coat and breeches, pulled up his stockings, and dashed down the back stairs. Striding through the servants hall, Shipwash glanced quickly out the window and noticed a carriage and horses. Lady Fountain had arrived ahead of time. Shipwash ruffled his powdered hair, took a deep breath, and dashed through the scullery toward the lobby.
“Shipwash, Saunterton is calling you,” a laundry maid heckled without turning away from a wash tub full of hot water.
“Like I don’t know already,” Shipwash replied. “That old buzzard Saunterton has a voice that could wake the dead.”
The door leading to the lobby opened before Shipwash reached the handle. It was Saunterton, glowering and flustered.
“Ahh, Mister Saunterton, I’ve been polishing silver . . .”
“Shipwash, you lazy rapscallion! I’ve been calling you.” Saunterton grabbed Shipwash by the coat sleeve, leading him toward the formal entrance of the house. “Lady Fountain has been waiting for thirty seconds and I can’t be expected to open doors as well as prepare the dining hall.”
Shipwash bounded across the pebble driveway, long legs propelling his lithe frame toward the carriage. “Welcome to Codfish Manor, Lady Fountain,” Shipwash said, as the Lady appraised him. He leaned in close to the window as she spoke discretely.
“Your breeches are unbuckled young man,” she said.
Shipwash hurriedly fastened his loose stocking before assisting the Lady to disembark from the carriage. Her disinterested demeanor hinted at high parentage and a residence superior to Codfish Manor. Shipwash walked ahead to open the main door of the manor.
“Your calves are rather slender for a footman. Does Lord Longbottom not feed you enough?” Lady Fountain asked.
Shipwash didn’t like to have his every move, gesture and physical attribute scrutinised by the upper class, but he tolerated it. He had plans to usurp the position of head butler from Saunterton. He also didn’t like Lord Longbottom one bit, and thought of him as an overstuffed hog. However, for the sake of Codfish Manor etiquette, Shipwash kept a tight rein on his emotions.
“Lord Longbottom is a fine master, my Lady,” he said. “In fact I remain slender due to the pleasure derived from endless duties performed for the satisfaction of the Lord and his guests. I’m actually feeling more robust every day and believe I will grow into a well-formed footman.”
Shipwash led Lady Fountain to the parlor in readiness for lunch with Lord Longbottom. He then quickly excused himself before rushing off to polish the silver he had earlier neglected. Saunterton followed closely behind, closing the door quietly.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Saunterton hissed.
“It’s almost noon Mister Saunterton,” replied Shipwash.
“Then why are you still wearing your morning livery? Do you think Lady Fountain didn’t note your plain black waistcoat. We at Codfish Manor welcome distinguished guests wearing our best striped vest for a luncheon appointment. Go and get changed immediately before you bring shame on all of us.”
“I beg your pardon Mister Saunterton,” Shipwash replied. “I will see to it that the laundry maid is reprimanded for her tardiness in returning my livery to me.”
Saunterton remained unmoved by the excuse. He had trained generations of footmen during his tenure at Codfish Manor and had become a trusted confidant of Lord Longbottom.
“Your waistcoat is hanging as always in your cupboard, Shipwash,” Saunterton said. “And the laundry staff are not for you to supervise. You already seem to spend an inordinate amount of time supervising the chambermaid.”
Shipwash retained his composure, although feeling slighted at being caught out, and suffocated by constant observation of his every move around Codfish Manor.
“Of course . . . you are right Mister Saunterton. How absent minded of me. My waistcoat is indeed hanging in the cupboard. Your perceptiveness is why you are head butler and I remain your humble servant.”
“And that’s the way it shall stay Shipwash. Run along and ready yourself for serving lunch. Lord Longbottom will be down in fifteen minutes. I must go entertain Lady Fountain,” Saunterton said.
Shipwash scurried around the pantry, cleaning silver, readying plates and glasses and making sure the head cook was on time with the meal. He peered into a large pot on the stove.
“Keep your nose out of that,” called the cook, while returning from the storeroom. “You will get fed when Lord Longbottom has well and truly completed his meal and all the cleaning is done.”
Shipwash felt repulsed by the enormity of the feast. “Well, it’s a sure thing I won’t get to eat this fine food,” Shipwash said. “It will be scraps for me, like a hungry hound that does all the work only to see the owner enjoy the spoils. There’s enough here to feed the King’s army, and it’s not like Lord Longbottom is getting any thinner. He would burst asunder if pricked with a knitting needle.”
The head cook wiped sweat from his forehead with a cloth, focusing on Shipwash through a haze of kitchen steam.
“It will serve you well, Shipwash, to not talk in such tones around Codfish Manor,” the cook said. “The walls have ears and we are under constant scrutiny. You need to know your place and accept it as your lot in life.”
Shipwash had accepted the position of footman to escape a life of drudgery. However, he had greater ambition and would do all he could to ingratiate himself to Lord Longbottom and become part of the inner circle of high class society. The cook didn’t seem to be an ally he could rely on as part of his plan.
“Of course you make perfect sense,” Shipwash said to the cook. “I have been ever so tired with my duties at Codfish Manor that I sometimes forget the great fortune Lord Longbottom, Mister Saunterton and expert cooks like yourself bestow upon me. If I had half your devotion I would be a most capable asset to the household.”
Lord Longbottom and Lady Fountain enjoyed the meal while being waited upon by Saunterton and Shipwash, who had exactingly set the table according to refined standards. Saunterton hovered close to the diners while Shipwash kept a respectful distance, ever ready to respond to any request. He stood tall and poised in a picture of obedient servitude—a stark contrast to his real desire of being the one served.
Shipwash refilled Lord Longbottom’s goblet for the third time before the Lord addressed him.
“What is your opinion of the potato, Shipwash?”
Shipwash had no idea how to answer such a question, nor did potatoes generally interest him. However, he was expert in tailoring his opinions to concur with Lord Longbottom and promote his own worthiness as a future head butler. He seized on the opportunity to ingratiate himself. He bowed slightly and spread his arms imploringly, choosing his words for maximum benefit.
“Well my Lord, my knowledge of the culinary art pales into insignificance compared to your refined gastronomic sensibility. I would prefer you illuminate me with an educated appraisal of the potato.”
Lord Longbottom sipped his drink and peered at Shipwash through the rim of the goblet. He placed the goblet respectfully down, prodded a crusty baked potato with shiny fork, and held it up to the light, before replying.
“The potato is the most delicious of all vegetables . . .”
Before Lord Longbottom could finish the sentence Shipwash butted in, “Indeed my Lord, the potato is delightfully delicious, tasty and very pleasant to the palette. Whether it is boiled, fried, mixed with other vegetables or as an ingredient in soup, the potato is incomparable. It is second to none – simply unparalleled.” Shipwash ended his expert summation of the potato, satisfied his knowledge had endeared him to Lord Longbottom. Saunterton scowled while Lady Fountain smiled amusedly, playing with the peas on her plate.
Lord Longbottom rejoindered, “Regardless of your opinion Shipwash, the potato is actually quite bland and tasteless of its own accord. It has little nutritional value and can be bad for some people, even leading to obesity and disease.” Lord Longbottom patted his rotund stomach for emphasis.
Shipwash mentally backpedaled before blurting out a confidant reply. “Once again you are absolutely right my Lord. The potato is an extremely agitating vegetable. Once hot, a potato is very slow to cool down, and I personally believe it is the catalyst for many new diseases. This innocuous round potato is the cause of diarrhea, diabetes, and uncontrolled flatulence. Potato is definitely the perpetrator of many troubles. I fully agree with you Lord Longbottom.”
Saunterton edged closer to Shipwash and nudged him toward the door. “Excuse us, my Lord, while we bring dessert,” he said.
Shipwash happily followed Saunterton to the galley, impressed at his own ability to flatter Lord Longbottom. Saunterton turned suddenly.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing Shipwash?”
“Doing my duty, Mr. Saunterton,” Shipwash said.
“Your duty doesn’t include being a fawning flatterer,” Saunterton replied.
Shipwash grinned, “You sound jealous Mr. Saunterton. It seems Lord Longbottom and Lady Fountain are quite interested in my opinion.”
“You don’t even have an opinion, Shipwash,” Saunterton said. “You are mindlessly agreeing with everything just to ingratiate yourself.”
Shipwash’s face hardened and fists clenched. He stiffened but retained enough composure to reply with a barely noticeable waver in his voice. “I intimidate you, do I not, Mr. Saunterton?” Shipwash said. “You’re fearful of losing your post as head butler to a younger man. I understand your concern. You should have heard Lady Fountain complimenting me regarding my stout calves earlier.”
Saunterton laughed heartily. “Silly boy,” he said. “I’m the most trusted servant at Codfish Manor, and there is a reason for that. I’m here to serve Lord Longbottom and his guests to the best of my ability. Why are you here, Shipwash?”
“Because I belong here!” Shipwash commanded, arrogant pride overcoming his placid facade. “I’m the son of a washerman who struggled to feed his family. I taught myself to read and write in order to move up in the world. I also have shrewdness and the ability to pounce on an opportunity. When the last footman was hospitalised with poisoning I was ready to step in and take his place.”
Saunterton’s face hardened as he looked searchingly at Shipwash, who quickly diverted his attention toward the kitchen. “We really should get back to the dining hall,” Shipwash said. “Mustn’t keep Lady Fountain waiting.”
“At last you are showing some initiative, Shipwash,” Saunterton said coldly.
Shipwash and Saunterton efficiently arranged cake, peaches and cream on silver plates. Shipwash contemplated his tenure at Codfish Manor. “Excuse my speaking too harshly, Mr. Saunterton,” he said. “The quality of my service here at Codfish Manor has been greatly enhanced by your expert guidance, and I am indebted to you for taking me under your wing. I have much to learn as your humble assistant, and have high hopes that I may serve you for many more years. My earlier outburst was of course not due to you, Mr. Saunterton, but because of having to deal with the incompetent chambermaid.”
No sooner had Shipwash re-entered the dining hall when Lady Fountain addressed him. “Your knowledge of the potato is quite vast young man. I would also like to hear your opinion of eggplant,” she said.
A faint smile crossed Shipwash’s face. He glanced momentarily at Saunterton before replying,
“It would not be fitting that my limited knowledge precedes your wisdom Lady Fountain. You are obviously well-travelled and proficient in all manner of culinary expertise. I would much prefer to hear your opinion of the eggplant.”
Lady Fountain dabbed cream off her lips and said, “As far as I know the eggplant is a very nice vegetable . . .”
Without hesitation, Shipwash again butted in, “Yes, that’s so true. There is hardly another vegetable that compares to eggplant. It can be roasted, fried, prepared as a relish and so much more. A house with eggplant in the pantry is a place worth residing. There are actually many varieties of eggplant and all of them are delicious.”
“Unfortunately, there is no nutritional value in eggplant,” Lady Fountain said firmly.
Shipwash shifted uncomfortably but quickly replied, “Again you are absolutely correct, Lady Fountain. Is there nothing you and Lord Longbottom don’t know? By itself, an eggplant is inedible and requires extreme measures to make it palatable. It causes ulcers and itching in the mouth. Eggplant is avoided by many intelligent people and is known to cause bad luck, therefore it is often roasted before serving if it is served at all.”
Lord Longbottom swallowed the last of his cake, pushed the plate away, and leaned back in his chair.
“You are a very strange fellow, Shipwash,” Lord Longbottom said. “When I say potato is good, you reply yes it is good. When I say it is bad you agree it is very bad. When Lady Fountain said eggplant is good your appreciation knew no bounds but when she stated the opposite you denigrated eggplant as an abominable and wicked vegetable. Do you have any personal integrity, Shipwash?”
“I’m your humble servant,” Shipwash replied. “Your opinion is my opinion. I have no desire other than to support whatever you do or say Lord Longbottom. Codfish Manor is my refuge and you are the master who has kindly and expertly provided an opportunity for my humble self to flourish as an insignificant member of your worthy household.”
Shipwash had much more to say but noticed Lord Longbottom’s attention had wavered. The Lord and Lady Fountain chuckled, much to Shipwash’s dismay. He hated them both but tried not to show it. Lord Longbottom turned his attention to Saunterton.
“What is your opinion Saunterton?” Lord Longbottom asked.
“Well sir, to be honest, in my opinion too much praise is the sign of a grovelling sycophant.”
Lord Longbottom clapped his hands together gleefully. “At last, an honest answer,” he said. “This is the reason I trust you Saunterton. You are not afraid to speak the truth even when it may sound unpalatable. Unlike sycophant Shipwash here, who thinks I need to be coddled and propped up with praise. You are a man of integrity, Saunterton, and I thank you for your ongoing service. As for you Shipwash, you snivelling wimp, you are dismissed from Codfish Manor. There is no place for deception here.”
“But you need me!” Shipwash demanded. “The previous footman was incompetent even before he got lead poisoning!”
Lord Longbottom looked at Saunterton, before turning back to face Shipwash. “Only Saunterton and I knew it was lead poisoning,” Lord Longbottom growled. “You are nothing but a devious rascal, Shipwash.”
“I heard whispers,” Shipwash pleaded. “The cook even told me the walls have ears.”
“If potatoes have eyes I don’t see why walls can’t have ears,” Lady Fountain laughed.
“And Codfish Manor has a door, Shipwash!,” Lord Longbottom yelled. “Make sure you close it on the way out. You have two minutes before I release the hounds.”
My wife, that is to say the mother of my two children, was not a woman to be taken for granted. Not that she was particularly beautiful, though she was beautiful enough and never gave me a reason to complain, not that she was particularly gracious, though she never rubbed anyone the wrong way, not that she was a good mother, though her children love her for who she is and would not replace her with another, not that she was particularly thrifty, though we never came to the streets because of her spending, not that she doted particularly on her friends and colleagues, though they all came round to support her at the time of our divorce, not that she had any particular talent or outstood herself in any way but she did many things reasonably well to emerge as efficient for what it was worth. She had a restrained manner of parler, and never gave a false compliment or spoke out of turn, something which earned her the trust of many people, though none of them would have called her special.
She was petite, for which she wore high heels, of tanned complexion and black hair, and a top-heavy figure, which she liked to show off in a red bikini with a slotted kerb she wore year after year on the beaches of the South around Toulon where she spent most of her summer vacations. That was her one great passion. She worked at a bar, had a regular salary, and was in all other aspects like her colleagues, except in her one great craving for the sun. Her other weakness was cordon bleu, especially when served with sauce roquefort, which she could munch on all afternoon long, never mind then the concerns of figure she frequently brought up. Otherwise, she had a straight nose which was a little hooked at the end like some exotic vegetable, the sort of a nose I like, and the reason I fell for her when I was eighteen, not knowing better and getting hooked six months later.
Thirty-one years of married life was like one long shopping trip to the vegetable marché, if you did not like something you did not talk about it, and if you liked something, you tried getting it on the best terms possible. We lasted so long because we never thought twice about it, for I think had we done it early enough we would have found out it was not worth it. It had nothing to do with other people. She cheated on me at least once with this old acquaintance of hers called Eric, a motard with a gap in his teeth and a million-watt smile, who had recently started losing control of his waistline, while as far as I am concerned, I stayed mostly true to the path, though the flirtations were legion. You know how I found out? One day Eric turned up at a neighbourhood bar, all groggy and panting for beer. It was five years after our marriage. He had not shaved, and on his trousers he was wearing a ridiculous white string instead of a belt. I asked what had happened, and he said every time he went to bed he woke up a size fatter. I thought that was a fantastic story but then he was in no mood to joke, saying he had to discard his belt because there was no more space to punch holes.
I thought nothing more about it for a week or ten days, following which I felt the need for a pair of drawstring trousers I have at home, which being in white linen are not exactly my style, but I do not mind prancing around in it in the house, being the holiday souvenir that it is. To my surprise, I found the lace at the neck missing. It could not have flown off on its own, or shrunk when the rest of the trousers was intact, and I did not remember having taken it out for any purpose whatsoever. It was crystal clear to me. My filet had become the last-minute retainer of my wife’s lover’s expanding navel.
I did not press her on the point, or on any other, though I have reason to believe that the affair did not last for long, notably because Eric was razed to the ground by a passing lorry on one of his motorcycling expeditions to Belgium. It is not the great storms that uproot a giant tree, it is the disease which creeps up from below and makes the timber so brittle that any passing wisp of a breeze can knock it off its feet. Such things usually die of a slow momentum of their own. When the severance comes, you cannot even feel the incision, so insensitive you have become from years of not being able to breathe freely.
Splitting is no different from slicing a finger in the process of cutting an apple, then. Why did we part ways? As is always the case, the breaking-point was something stupid. I was sick of picking the excreta of her pet mongrel, Couti. The little devil became the most common point of dispute between us, being as it was a gift from her mother (the old lady did not forget to sound the death knell for our relationship before her death, something she would have wished all her life). For eight years, it tormented me, right from the first moment of the morning when it would stuff my nose with its tail in its excitement to get to his mistress to lick her face, to the last hours of the day when it lost its head at the emerging cuckoo at midnight doubling over itself and whining so murderously you would think the German army was at the doorsteps. Even the neighbours complained about it.
One day I really had enough when it pissed on an 1875 edition of the Communist Manifesto which I had left on the carpet by the side of the sofa to allow the glue on the binding to dry. Without thinking twice about it, I shunted it outside along with its mistress. She banged on the door but I would not open. All of them thought I was heartless, but I was over it, and for no price in the world would I let that woman into my four walls again let alone her canine companion. To be fair to us, she never offered to part ways with it to save our marriage. That was our story. A stack of cards that you built for years took one moment in unravelling. There were two or three things that were hard at the beginning, such as you did not find coffee in your cup in the morning (she used to leave early for work) and had to do it from scratch, and that laundry did not appear stacked of its own, but had to be lugged to a nearby self-service, but little by little life pivots round its new routine. Habit is a very strong fellow. Even now, as I sift through the schedule of programmes on television later in the night, having locked the doors and having taken a pillow under my arms, I am merely wondering if I would catch a cold or not if I wear my pantouffles without the socks after shower. The plants have to be watered, the electricity bill has to be paid at the Commission, three days’ meat has to be taken out of the congélateur for tomorrow’s hotpot, and there is no cat to feed luckily. I often read history books then, to put me to sleep, for I find nothing new in them, and that bores me tremendously.
That is how I learnt to start from a scratch, four years ago, and by and by it is has been an exciting adventure. We all see each other once a year, including the wife (who still has the other pair of keys), at the Christmas dinner and it is my luck to have begotten children who are sympathetic, especially the daughter who was the only one to have supported me over the problem of the errant dog. The son is younger. He had drifted away from me a long time ago. I consider it a good sign. When sons go away, and daughters are distant but sympathetic, it means one has succeeded in raising good children. Scrupulously, under my flap I hatched them and now they have flown away to their respective enclosures to found new families. It is good that new saplings should find earth. I never had second thoughts about having them, or about any of the promulgated exigencies of life. I took most of what life threw at me, without complaining, for otherwise I would not have stayed in a marriage which did not work for thirty-one years. During this time, while we were as close to inhaling each other’s breath, she might well have been the extra seat on the sofa we always lacked.
My First Mistake or Abscess doesn’t make the heart grow fonder
Andrew McKenna
My first mistake, probably, was swimming in the Río Napo. My second, letting a German doctor look in my ear. After trekking for nearly a week in the sucking ooze of the upper Amazon, he’d left his better judgement and I’d left mine in a miasma rising out of the sweaty foliage. ‘I’ll use river water now,’ Dieter said, snapping the lid off the shampoo bottle and holding it under the water. I watched a lazy trail of silver bubbles break the scum on the surface. ‘You see, ve yust need to unlodge de vax. Den you will be able to hear normally again. It’s zo zimple.’ A soft, almost reassuring flushing noise had been in my ear since I’d swum in the Napo three days earlier. The swim wasn’t even refreshing – the water felt like only a slightly thicker but same temperature version of the air we were breathing. At the end of a hard day’s walk, some of it through virgin forest where our guides hacked a path clear for us, it was a simple pleasure to watch the mud in solution drift away, to have your ankles free of mosquitoes, however briefly. But a piece of wax lodged over my eardrum, causing the flushing noise, muffling all else. I could pull on my earlobe and the wax would stretch and pop, momentarily restoring normal hearing, but when I let it go it would spring back and block again. I hadn’t been able to dislodge it even with tiny sharp instruments from Libby’s sewing kit. Dieter noticed me jiggling my ear at lunchtime and offered to syringe it for me. As he was fresh out of syringes in the middle of the Amazon, we used a shampoo bottle with purified water. Having water squirted into your ear under high pressure is no unpleasant experience. It sounds as if you’re in the middle of a washing machine, I imagine, and makes you nearly as unsteady on your feet, but it feels like something is moving at last around what’s been bunging your ear. Dieter kept up a cheery banter as he worked, along the lines of ‘Ya, ven I vas in Africa, hey hey? I only used to take de malaria tablets ven I’m getting de fevers, you know? And such fevers! De human body, you know? Can’t get dis hot without combusting spontaneously.’ We ran out of purified water, which was when Dieter filled up again with a splash from the Napo. Maybe he was fresh out of common sense too. He gave my ear a solid squirt, forcing the ooze and wrigglers under high pressure into my ear, and with a ‘Well I hope dis works now,’ we wandered back to the others. The wax didn’t move, but I was too hot and giddy and there were too many mosquito bites to think. Maybe it would work its way out, just pop out when I least expected. I watched the butterflies while we ate a meal of potato mash, rice and spaghetti. Carlos, our guide, was a man for the major food groups. Libby was sulking. She’d had enough of jungle food. She’d had enough of the jungle. ‘For all we know,’ I said by way of consolation, ‘maybe your body needs this much carbohydrates in the jungle?’ ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she hissed. ‘I can’t believe what that man is doing to us.’ She toyed with a ball of greyish mashed potato with her fork and a bird screamed above us. She started. ‘Did it work?’ she asked, remembering my ear and fixing Dieter with a withering gaze across the clearing as he chatted to his girlfriend. I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘Sssshhh, you don’t have to shout,’ she said, with the faintest of smiles. It was the first smile we’d seen for a week, and brought the old Libby to mind fleetingly. But it disappeared and jungle girl returned. ‘But it sure felt good,’ I added. When we hit the water again in our motorised pirogue, the engine noise struck me full blast in my wounded ear. I watched the steaming jungle slip by as we headed back to the relative civilisation of Misahuallí, and cupped my hand over my ear. It throbbed in empathy with the roar of the motor. ‘If I was a train I’d run up and down your back,’ kept running rhythmically through my head in time with the throb of the engine, as I watched Libby sitting up in front of me, sniffing disdainfully at the forest. Families – whole villages – waved to us from other canoes as we slipped past. One little girl saw me with my hand over my ear and, giggling, imitated my gesture as her boat shot past. The flushing in my ear had grown more insistent. The crap was backing up in the pipe. In Misahuallí Libby and I waved goodbye to the others and booked into a guesthouse. We took cold showers and picked off stray leeches under our socks, sleeves and, marvellously, her bra. ‘I don’t have the faintest idea why I came,’ she muttered as I poked a glowing matchstick into another engorged body. When we treated ourselves to a slap up meal of banana pancakes afterwards, I could hardly chew for the ache now gripping my ear and jaw. Libby looked up at me from the book she was reading between bites when I whimpered, and sighed as if I’d made her lose her place. We caught the bus up to Baños next morning, leaving the lowlands and the Oriente, as they call it, behind for good. To Ecuadorians it holds the mystery and danger, that delicious frisson of terror that the words ‘Japan’ or ‘Formosa’ must have held for Victorian Britons. To highlanders the Amazon is full of head hunting tribes (they don’t any more), bird eating spiders (I didn’t see any), mosquitoes that suck so much blood they can’t take off (true), piranhas and sucking red mud (fact). Highlanders would rather stay in the cool highlands during a coup, a volcanic eruption – a war – than venture at the best of times into that steaming pit of leeches, swollen brown rivers and incorrigible German doctors. By the time we pulled up in Baños the pain in my ear was intense. Dictionary clutched in my hand and money tied up in my handkerchief, I visited Dr Raul Martinez-Lopez. He had a tiny, glum office with dirty blue linoleum on the floor. The man matched the office beautifully. He was tiny and glum and had cloudy, pale blue eyes. He glared at me as if I had lost my mind when I started to explain the problem, but I eventually made myself understood. He shoved in his poky instrument with the light in the barrel and peered down my ear, making a few non-committal clicking noises with his tongue. ‘Yes,’ he said in his rasping Spanish, ‘you have an infección. How did you get this?’ ‘Swimming in the Río Napo,’ I said grinning, sheepish. ‘Aah!’ the doctor let out a great explosion of air and looked at the ceiling. ‘I myself am too afraid to go to El Oriente. Spiders the size of your face. ¿Piranhas, no?’ He grinned, exhibiting a row of brownish teeth. Libby was drying her nails when I reached our room and didn’t look up. Look up and you might smear the polish. ‘You’ve spilled shampoo all through my bag,’ she said by way of greeting. ‘I spilled it,’ I said, throwing myself on the bed. ‘Yes. You packed it.’ A silence in which you could hear the nails drying followed. I said, ‘Uh. Sorry. I’ll be more careful in future.’ ‘I hope there’s no rats here,’ she said, looking around the room. ‘So how did you go at the doctor’s?’ I asked after another silence. ‘Yeah, pretty well,’ I replied. ‘I got these big antibiotics, see? Big blue pills. I’ve taken a double dose already … How’s your ear? … Well, it hurts like fuck.’ ‘You’re the one who wanted to come here,’ she sniffed, ‘and I wish you wouldn’t swear.’ I lay awake most of the night as the pain settled in. I listened with my good ear to the strange night noises; scratches, snuffles, some sort of faint sobbing behind the wall. The breeze. It did occur to me that perhaps the noises were coming from inside my own head. I couldn’t rest the right side of my face on the pillow and was doing well to swallow a gob of my own spit. It was beginning to feel worse than an average infección. White-water rapids were building up in my ear canal. We took the first bus back to Quito in the morning, and I swear I was delirious. I pressed my fingers into my temples and sweated, but it wasn’t hot. We passed through an eerie landscape of plunging ravines with the sun glinting on rivers far below, hairpin bends, impenetrable, overhanging foliage overcrowding the edge of the road. Indians with stoic brown faces, dressed in brilliant ponchos, got off the bus in the middle of nothing and disappeared quickly over the brows of hills, or came out of nowhere to flag our driver down. I saw a man silhouetted on the crest of a hill, holding a dagger aloft, about to bring it down on the chest of his victim. I saw a rag-tag band of Spanish conquistadors marching across the mountains, frayed by hunger and exhaustion, defeating a whole nation of Inca warriors. Back in Quito, Libby and I broke out into a beautiful argument at the depot. Amused faces stared at us from the sidelines as her voice grew ever more shrill. She wanted to go to our pensión and unpack before I went to hospital. I wanted to go straight to hospital, but I was overawed by heat (it wasn’t hot) and unsteady because of the earthquake (there was no earthquake that morning in Quito). ‘You’re so fucking selfish!’ she chirruped at me. ‘This is all your fault. I have to go back and lie down or else I’m going to die.’ ‘And I really will if we don’t get to hospital,’ I whined. An amused crowd had started to gather. Look at the gringos! ‘A little earache never killed anyone!’ She was losing her self-control, and so was I in a different way. I’d liked to see her lose self-control in the past, but this was different, and not pleasant. I was barely standing and could feel my bowels loosening. All I could do was suck up the dust in her wake. I reeled up the hill through the old colonial part of town, classified by UNESCO, oh yes, sweat pouring down my face, someone with a mean streak skewering my ear with an ice pick, built in 1546, yes yes, gorgeous. Nice old church. Beautiful plaza. Look up, there’s the sky. Watch out for the shit on the street. We reached the hospital off Avenida Amazonas by lunchtime, after Libby had had her constitutional. The world was receding from focus. The doctor, another small, brown man with pale blue eyes, started talking, hey hey, German to me. He looked in my ear and shook his head gravely. ‘Tiene una abscessa,’ he said. ‘You must see a specialist.’ Libby snorted impatiently when I reported back to her. As if I’d invited this abscess in, just to spite her. She was seated in the waiting room, engrossed in her novel. We had to wait another few hours until the especialista had finished his round of golf, or whatever it is that makes specialists the world over keep you waiting. Libby hardly budged the whole time, and I had my head between my legs and was counting the blood spots, either on the floor or before my eyes. I couldn’t tell. The especialista had a merry glint in his eye for someone who was about to inflict so much misery. He looked down my ear, the third man in a dirty-ish white coat to do so in the past twenty-four hours, whistled between his teeth and said something like, ‘My, but you have a big abscessa in there!’ As if it were something I should almost be proud of. So in my delirium I managed an almost-proud smile. ‘We have to put a mecha in,’ he smiled. ‘¿Una mecha?’ I smiled. ‘¡Sí!’ he smiled, almost laughing. ‘¡Una mecha!’ ‘What’s a mecha?’ I smiled, growing tired of all this smiling and near laughing and becoming very nervous of a sudden. I looked around for my dictionary and realised it was in the waiting room with Libby. ‘Una mechacita,’ he said, ‘to draw out the pus.’ So, hey, it was only going to be a mechacita, only a tiny little mecha. The next I knew he had taken a white hot metal poker out of the fire and climbed up on the table. He jammed the poker into my ear with both hands, then jumped up and down on my head and the side of my face, jamming the tiny little mechacita in. I quivered but I didn’t let out a sound. This was serious, I had a madman here. I clung to the side of the table as he pushed the little mechacita into my ear. He was moaning with the exertion, until I realised I was moaning with the joy of having such a small mechacita jammed into my ear. They injected me after that, I don’t know who did it, or with what, but I know I loosened my trousers after a nurse asked me to and they jabbed me in the rear with another white hot poker. I didn’t know where they got so many all of a sudden. ‘¿Dónde está el fuego?’ I asked, surveying the room shakily. ‘Where’s the fire?’ Somebody laughed then, maybe me, and they ushered me out into the waiting room, into the stony silence of my girlfriend. ‘You look pale,’ she said. The rest of the day twisted around my ears. Time was eaten by worms. I only remember snatches as the morphine or pethadine or truth serum took effect. Wandering off the footpath into the path of an onrushing bus and someone – not Libby – snatching me back; taxis floating by on Amazonas; busy, shoving crowds that were now dancing wraiths. Libby looked up my dictionary and explained that a mecha was a ‘wick’. Simple. To draw the pus out. I was bathed in an ethereal glow. I still felt pain, but I was beyond it, floating like a condor over Cotopaxi Volcano, perched on the rim and peering down at the fires below, waiting for the explosion. Later, drinking dinner through a straw and rolled up in bed, I watched Libby brushing her hair, getting ready for a night on the town with the Irish girls from across the hall, I knew then my first mistake hadn’t been swimming in the Napo.
The road splays over the slight curve of the land, fitting itself into hillsides and stretching flat over the fields. I am driving a very long way. Hundreds of miles more, and the landscape won’t change much. A town will pop up, greeting drivers by with the opaque glow of fast food signs and farm supply stores. Eventually I’ll stop at an identical town, pull off at a familiar exit and let the past wash over me in its strange newness.
My car is named Zethar, it is dark purple with a silvery sheen and I love it in the way we love things we don’t understand⎯with fear, with hope. We have made this journey before, thousands of miles ago.
The only thing I can do for Zethar myself are fill up the gas tank and wash the windows (though never without leaving streaks), but I have learned to listen closely for the subtle changes in its sounds, its handling. Is there a grinding noise when I brake? Is the steering wheel jerking to the left? But still I only go to the mechanic when a light pops up on the dashboard or Zethar doesn’t start.
We’ve been together a long time. We’d be best friends were it not for the fact that I know nothing about it. Zethar is a beautiful but terrifying mystery⎯especially now, when there’s only $200 in my bank account and my AAA membership is expired. I listen to Zethar’s noises raptly. And I think I hear a sharp tinny squeal, but it might just be a distant siren wailing.
I glance at the map on my phone and see there are still around a hundred miles until the exit. So far its been an uneventful drive⎯
Zethar’s gauges all suddenly point to zero, the dashboard lights blink out, the engine dies. We come to a complete standstill in the middle of the highway. Behind me someone honks, then passes with a flinging of hand gestures out the window.
I manage to restart Zethar, pull over and sit for a moment, trying to collect myself.
When I put the key back in the ignition, the car doesn’t want to wake up. I look at my phone for a few minutes, hoping a magical solution will present itself, but as always every desperate Google search leads only to forums full of car dads spouting helpful-unhelpful tips I cannot comprehend.
Can’t really afford it, but I look for the nearest mechanic and find one five miles away. I try Zethar again and⎯miraculously!⎯it awakens. We drive the five miles, me holding my breath.
I see the garage as soon as I exit the highway. The office is just a long narrow closet attached to its side. The owner (I assume) sits inside, a pale lumpy mass in a large padded rocking chair, walled in by a desk littered with papers. I tell him what happened, he scrawls something silently on a notepad, nods his head at the door, and mumbles that Jim will take a look once he’s done. Walking back outside, I see Jim talking to the only other customer, a middle-aged man with an unplaceable accent, speaking with many elaborate gesticulations. His sedan is hoisted six feet up in the air.
Not even a bench to sit on. I pace. I wish I hadn’t quit smoking. I check my phone but there is no service.
Eventually the other man lets Jim lower the car and goes into the office to pay. Jim looks at me silently.
“Um, hello! So, my car was being super weird on the highway?” Jim doesn’t react. “I was driving and it just completely stopped working. Everything shut down. And then I couldn’t start it at first but then I could and drove here? Can you take a look at it please?”
Jim is a head shorter than me, thin dry hair smattered over his scalp and bony lopsided features. His teeth cluster at the front of his mouth, as though there’s not enough room for them in his jaw.
“Sure I’ll check it out,” he says, reaching a palm out for the keys.
I surrender Zethar to the inverted abyss of the garage. Trying not to stare at Jim while he works, though there is nothing else to look at. No stores around. A gas pump out front (questionably functional: looks mid-century) and an empty ice box by the entrance.
Trying to see how long I can go without looking at my phone, but it’s never more than three minutes.
Finally Jim lowers Zethar’s gleaming dust-plum carapace and walks over to me.
“Nothing wrong with your car.”
“Really? I told you, it completely shut off on the road, just died. And nothing’s wrong with it?”
Jim shrugs. “I checked everything. Looks good.”
I try to think of a response.
“It’s 20 bucks for service. Pay him,” he nods at the office.
I go in and pay, get back in the car, and head towards the highway.
For the next hour there’s no problem, Zethar is silent. I don’t turn on any music and just focus on the hum of the engine for 60 full minutes. I should be getting close now, but when I check the map on my phone (service finally restored), I’ve driven just a few miles.
As I try to figure out how that’s even mathematically possible, a screech tears from the front of the car and the steering wheel begins to jerk in my hands. Pulling over, terrified, I grab my phone and try to figure out what happened. I search “car screech noise steering wheel shakes” but none of the sites coming up seem right, or I’m having trouble reading the words on the screen. Accidentally click on an ad for new brake pads and for some reason go through the motions of placing an order, mechanically entering my credit card number, stopping just short of hitting the submit button. I frantically close the screen and start scrolling through my contacts, trying to find someone I know who’s nearby or knows something about cars, but don’t recognize most of the names flowing beneath my fingers.
The road stretches before me, glimmers of dusk on the horizon. I’ve left myself back home and stretching out westward has only loosened my claim on reality⎯I wonder if I have any original thoughts left, any faith or purpose.
Keys back in the ignition, Zethar is acting normal again.
We plunge quickly into twilight, thick coating of shadow on the road. Fewer cars now so I’m going fast, hoping I can actually make it there before dark. I try not to keep glancing at the map, turn the screen off for half an hour, but somehow only manage to cover five miles.
I scream. I growl. I curse. I beat the steering wheel with my palms then grab my phone and fling it to the floor. It slips under the seat and there’s no way to get it back out without stopping. The sky is darkening and there are almost no other cars, certainly no people, not even gas stations now. I make a halfhearted attempt to paw around under the seat, but I can’t do much without completely ducking under the wheel and driving myself off the road.
Okay. I think I remember: exit 147. I just drove past the 95-mile marker. I can do this.
Where I’m coming from, autumn is just starting to whisper through the trees. The air sharpens and the leaves begin to dapple gold. Soon they will all transform and, during a heavy rain, plummet to the ground, coating it with a carpet of yellow and red. I remember walking through them in years past⎯a sea of wet leaves enveloping my sodden shoes and a feeling of absolute lightness in my heart.
And now, back to the primordial ooze. Out west. The past, the pastoral, burnt out poesy. I don’t know why I even decided to do this. The world in crisis, about to twist itself into pieces, I’m on an ill-planned road trip. And I can’t even get there.
Darkness shatters over the pavement. Zethar emits a quiet hiss.
There’s no way to get to where I’m going; there’s no road to the past. I wander through the thickest of night in a car whose engine is speaking an incomprehensible language.
Then⎯mile marker 96. A few minutes later⎯97. I’m making progress. Just 50 more miles.
As soon as I relax in my seat, the car begins its sibilant song again.
I let out a dry sob. Zethar hisses louder, as though in response to my exasperation. I stroke the steering wheel in halfhearted consolation.
Getting tired. Ignoring the sound, hoping it goes away on its own or works itself through somehow or at least doesn’t get worse until I arrive. Not long left now. The next mile marker I spot reads 99. I thought more time has passed. It’s already 9 o’clock. I’ve gone two miles in, what, 20 minutes? The speedometer hasn’t wavered. The engine or whatever begins to sputter in choked plosives, the thin red arrows in the dashboard gauges jerking side to side.
The clock is now blinking 12:00. Broken. That must be why I couldn’t keep track of time earlier! Briefly calmer, I feel my mind fog and my eyelids get heavier. I wish I could stop somewhere to buy an energy drink, feel the fizz in my mouth and the muscles behind my eyes tightening to hold the lids open.
The next mile marker is 99 again. This time I pull over, despite the gloom enclosing the edges of the road. Scream and scream, tears burning hot in my eyes. I turn Zethar off in hopes of quieting the discontent under its hood and plummet into darkness as all the glowing details of the dashboard and headlights turn off.
No other cars on the highway. I sit in silence for a few moments, stunned at my own rashness but too frightened to move. Then, with a heavy dread balled up at the top of my spine I start the car⎯it mumbles heavily and doesn’t turn over. Again I utter several dry desperate sobs. I take out the key, put it back in the ignition, and Zethar comes to glorious life. Engine muted, we roll away, my jaw clenched with the titanium grip of foreboding.
Back to the road, back to counting mile markers. I don’t want to turn on the radio⎯all my stations are set to old frequencies and the thought of scrolling through static on this strange night makes me physically ill.
It takes another hour to reach marker 100. By now my eyes are clouded with tears, my cheeks chapping from the salt. The heat is blasting on max but still I shiver. My foot is frozen on the gas pedal
I wish I could stop and retrieve my phone from beneath the passenger seat. Maybe I have a few missed calls and texts by now, everyone wondering why I’m late.
Or⎯is it that I haven’t told anyone I’m coming? Is it a surprise? I can’t recall.
Which exit do I get off at? 147? 148? I think both will bring me to roughly the same area, but I realize now I don’t even remember how to get from the highway to the house. It’s a blur of roads in my mind. I was planning on arriving early enough in the day to let my memory guide me through the streets but now it’s hopeless.
The hissing persists, punctuated by discontented grinding noises that shake the steering wheel. Something is horribly wrong with Zethar and I can’t remember the last time I noticed any promise of civilization. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything. It is deep night.
I think again about the mechanic who checked out my car. Already I can’t recall his features.
But⎯I do retain some memories of longer ago. Reflected light bouncing off the walls, my mother’s perfume on the telephone receiver, dirty snow glinting on the pavement. Not memories so much as churnings of a frightful mind no longer extant. Malformed things, mostly a confusion of feelings stored with the absolute knowledge that their portent would remain vivid forever.
I no longer see mile markers, only the few feet of road ahead revealed by the soft headlights. The car’s noises have assimilated into my auditory landscape.
I am still moving forward but the car no longer covers any distance⎯we have broken into perpetuity. Its malfunctions transported us both into the shadow of the only moment and so we drive drive drive down the highway, the miles expanding into a blank eternity.
We fade, unremembered, unmourned⎯finally⎯into the night.
Oh, my friends, I beg of you. I implore you. I entreat you. I warn you. Strictly. Severely. Look, do not cultivate the habit of ignoring the tasks set before you in life. For too long, my friends, for far too long, I have been dragging my foot. So long has it been, I do not even recall what it is I have been dragging my foot about all this time.
Take heed, my friends, and listen. To drag one’s foot is far worse than any other form of ignoring or delaying that which needs getting done. At least with, say, procrastination, one ends up getting the thing in question done, since a deadline usually, eventually pinches one into action.
To put something off can be quite harmless, since putting something off implies that you will get the thing done at least sooner or later, if not after a long while.
But, my dear friends, to drag your foot on something, that can become quite habitual and second nature. So much so that it can become part of the way you navigate the world. And nothing about such behavior suggests you will ever get done whatever needs getting done.
I can attest, dear friends, since I have been dragging my foot on something for quite some time. You see, I’m even forced to speak in general terms, saying, “for some time,” since I cannot provide a specific timeframe, as I do not recall exactly when I began the practice of dragging my foot.
Oh, many years ago, I had something that needed getting done. You understand, some paperwork, some form to fill out, some application to submit, some marriage proposal to make, some sin to confess … some thing or other to get done. There may even have been a couple of things. Perhaps several. And I did not want to do them. Though I do not now recall why. Perhaps because I was afraid of discovering the truth, afraid of failure, or because I did not want to be bothered with the busy work. Either way, it was at that point that I began the practice of dragging my foot.
To start, dragging my foot was quite the nuisance. One must learn to amble about in a bit of a shuffling, limping manner. And, for the novice, it can be awkward and cumbersome, and it takes a bit of getting used to, as you can imagine, if you’re going to go about dragging your foot everywhere you go. On that, I was determined to succeed, lest I stop dragging my foot and would be faced with getting done the things I was so determined not to do.
To drag my right foot, you see, I first needed to step forward with my left leg, while leaning on my right foot. Then, to proceed in my ambulatory progression, along the surface of the sidewalk, I would drag the right foot forward, making a loud, delightful, scraping sound. Skerrrrrrrrip! Then I would repeat, stepping my left leg forward, and so on.
Mind you, I was able to master the motions after many months, but it took quite some time to walk from desk to hall, say, down hall to bathroom, and back again. Easily took twice the amount of time. But I was committed. I was dragging my foot, by golly. And nothing else much mattered.
Now, after some time, I was so focused on mastering the foot-dragging, I all the more neglected and forgot what it was I had been dragging my foot about in the first place. What’s worse, as a result of all the foot-dragging, I used my right foot so infrequently that it took on severe numbness and soon grew weak and then altogether turned lame. All muscle was eventually lost. If you can believe that.
In due course, whilst continually dragging my foot around, wearing down the soles of many a good shoe, I might add, I soon lost the ability to utilize my foot. In any capacity.
Years passed. Eventually, doctors told me the foot needed amputation, blackened and shriveled as it had become by lack of proper blood flow.
Doctors had to plumb cut it off.
Now I’ve got a stump down there, just above where my ankle should be. I still can amble about, mind you. In much the same way as when dragging my foot. You’ll recall: striding forward with my left leg while leaning on the right stump. Now, however, I swing the stump forward, so as not to drag it along the sidewalk and make matters worse for the rest of my leg.
Now my walking rate is about three times slower than in the days before I started the foot-dragging in the first place. I know, I know. It’s a burden. But, still, I am determined to drag my foot.
Now, my friends, I bet you’re wondering how I possibly could be dragging my foot after the amputation. That is a reasonable question. However, the answer is quite simple. You see, obstinately wanting to continue my practice of foot-dragging, lest I might have to get on with doing that which so long ago needed doing, I tied the cut off foot to a rope and tied the rope about my waist. Now I drag the foot behind me. Everywhere I go.
Still to this day, I do not recall what it is I have been dragging my foot about. But, look behind me and you shall see that I still am. Tied to my rope, as I limp along, drags my shriveled, blackened, good-for-little-but-dragging-about foot.
On that Thursday (as he thought of it ever since), he was on his way to Tel Aviv from the kibbutz to take the lanolin that the kibbutz supplied from its sheepfold. He stopped on the way, as he always did, at “The Memory of Jacob” town to fill out his lottery card in the hope of winning the big pot. And, as always, he felt embarrassed at the sheepish odor that surely was evident upon him; his own nose, inured to the smell, was of no help to his olfactory objectivity. He thought the fact that he was named Jacob and the place was named “The Memory of Jacob” might aid him in his gamble. This time a brilliant idea struck him, he would apply the dialectical method of selecting his lotto numbers:
for the First of May
for the fathers of Marxism, Marx and Engels
7- for the letters of Trotsky’s name
12-for Eva Luxembourg’s name
But unlike the many times before, this time he won! (12-Eva Luxembourg). And won not small. 20 million shekels. “A lot of lanolin,” in the argot of the sheep tending brotherhood. The sole winner. In dollars, 6.5 million. In yen –but any dealings in yen would be in the future.
Of course, he could not sleep after seeing the draw on television (for which he absented himself from a kibbutz meeting concerning the budget) and seeing that he won. And he could not tell his wife since he was divorced or his “life partner” (a terminology given to over-optimism) since she had left him not two months before. And talking to the sheep, as he liked to do, wouldn’t help in the matter, sheep were used to being counted, not counting.
The next day he threw aftershave on his hands (to cover up the sheep odor) and went to the lotto office to pick up his check. He refused to wear the traditional winners’ bag over his head to disguise himself from potential demands for monetary assistance. The socialist tradition dictated honesty, even in capitalistic matters.
He ran to the closest bank to deposit the check, humming a tune which he then realized was the socialist anthem, “The Internationale”, sung on the kibbutz on May 1st, perhaps a subconscious counterbalancing to his capitalistic act. When the bank clerk saw the figure on the check, he summoned the bank manager who bestowed on Jacob overwhelming willingness and attention, which discomfited Jacob, since he was not used to being a celebrity. Once the check was deposited, he was happy to be free of his burden and the fear that he would lose it. He was sorry he hadn’t taken from it 10 shekels to eat in a restaurant but consoled himself that he had saved himself embarrassment before the bank manager for taking out such a small amount. This capitalism wasn’t so easy, as surely Marx knew. Marx had apparently never hit it big on a gamble (except for Marxism, of course). Nor even Engels, despite his wealth, could be said to be a big winner. So he went back to the kibbutz and the sheep, and told nobody because he feared how they would receive him ideologically more than the fact they might force him to “donate” the money to the kibbutz. But he couldn’t hold it in any longer and he whispered it to his favorite sheep, and felt better for it.
Alas, such a secret could not remain a secret long, and even if it could, Jacob wasn’t your closed-mouth-secret-keeper. Too much ideology and soul-baring in his youth (dialectical revelation was the vogue) had made this impossible. He turned to Dotan, the closest thing to a confident he had on the kibbutz. Dotan, like himself, was on the lower end of the kibbutz honor hierarchy, both having had served in the clothing dispensary in the army, while the top of the hierarchy had served in the elite army units.
At first, Dotan thought Jacob was pulling his leg. It took all of Jacob’s persuasion efforts, not his strong forte, but under the impetus of the secret burning a hole in his soul he succeeded. Showing Dotan the deposit receipt for the check also helped.
“So what do we do with the money?” Dotan asked.”
“We?” shot back Jacob, suspicious.
“Of course, I am using the collective ‘we’—the kibbutz ‘we,’ not you and me.”
“You think it is a kibbutz problem?” Jacob said, though he knew it was.
“Oi, boychick, and how!” confirmed Dotan..
“I thought you promised that this would remain between us.”
“Yes, I promised that it would. And I won’t tell anyone, but –”
“Nor me,” affirmed Jacob.
“But it will come out anyway, these things always do. Especially if there is only one winner and he took – how much, 20 million?”
“Shhh,” whispered Jacob, looking around, though there was no one around, “Do you think I should tell the kibbutz?”.
“I think you should. It will be in your favor. Revealed by you, not discovered from outside. But you’d better do it fast, before the 20 million cat is out of the bag.” Dotan paused. “Some cat!”
Jacob looked downcast.
“Don’t worry. It’s not a confession, though there are some members who will treat it as such. Our ideologically pure.”
And so, at the next general meeting, after the perennial disputes over whether the kibbutz children should sleep in the common children’s sleeping quarters or sleep at home with the parents, and who should be drafted for orchard picking duty when the crop was ripe, were finished, and as Menachem was about to adjourn the meeting, Jacob stood up to the surprise of all, as he usually sat passively without saying anything.
“Kibbutz member Jacob, you have something to say?” asked Menachem, in an irritated voice.
“Just …that …I…have…won…20… million… shekels… in the lotto.”
There ensued a stunned silence, rare in kibbutz meetings. If Jacob had announced that he was engaged to marry a sheep the silence couldn’t have been more deafening. When it ended, however, it really ended. Cacophony. The final of the 1812 Overture, the winning of the European Song Contest, the stadium noise when Maccabee Tel Aviv won the European Basketball Championship by defeating the Soviet team (well, most of the country, the kibbutz was torn between the Old Guard who favored the Soviets and the New Guard who favored Maccabee) are but poor examples.
Jacob stood there like Robespierre before the Revolutionary Tribunal.
It took all of Menachem’s podium skill to return order.
“Is that all you have to say?” Menachem asked
“All?” murmured Jacob. “Isn’t it enough?”
“I was referring to what you will do with your ill-gotten … your money.”
“Do? I haven’t decided.”
“Member Jacob, you are standing here in front of a general meeting of the kibbutz. Your kibbutz. The sole kibbutz in the country that raises the banner of Marx-Leninism, the rest of the kibbutzim following the pale principles of socialism. Your kibbutz is in need of financial assistance. Certainly it is an act of Providence –well, fate—that you came into your good fortune. Well?” he said, hands on hips.
Jacob grasped what Menachem was after. Everybody at the meeting grasped it.
Dotan rose to defend his friend. “Marx said, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’ Jacob belongs to the second category.”
They hooted him down, a prelude to pro, con, and in between opinions as to whether Jacob should donate all, part, or none to the kibbutz.
This time it took twenty minutes to quiet the horde, for horde it had become. By then Jacob’s new friends had raised him on their shoulders and carried him out of the dining room, where kibbutz meetings were held. Did they share in his joy – or hope to share in his profits? It is difficult to say. As Marx put it, “Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.”
Two days later, Jacob received a message from the kibbutz telephone operator. His ex-wife had called. Jacob was astounded. They hadn’t talked in five years. For a few moments, he couldn’t think what had brought about this diversion from practice. Then he realized why. But he hadn’t time to dwell on the matter because the operator informed him that Aviva had called. His ex-life companion. He suspected she might be regretting the “ex.”
He sat down with his head in his hands. Thoughts of continuing his life quietly on the kibbutz with the sheep were evaporating in favor of alternative thoughts of villas, new cars, trips around the world were looming. Capitalism, the anathema of the kibbutz way of life, didn’t seem so terrible.
By the time of the next kibbutz general meeting set to discuss “the matter of Jacob” could be convened, the kibbutz, as concerning so many other matters, was divided into two camps: those who thought Jacob should donate the money to the kibbutz, and those who thought he should be allowed to keep it.
Jacob had his own thought on the matter. “I believe I am entitled to the money,” he announced.
‘But what of ideology!” someone shouted.
“Privatization is the trend, ” Jacob countered. “More than one kibbutz is considering having the members as individual ownerships.”
“They aren’t in the situation where one of their members won 20 million shekels,” someone pointed out.
“The principle is the same, “Jacob tried to argue.
“I’ll settle for the interest,” another commented.
The arguments continued. To each appeal to the collective principle, or to kibbutz laws, Jacob had an answer. “I bought the ticket with my own money, not kibbutz funds, I bought it outside of kibbutz territory.
Arguments began. Words like “brothers”, “the common good;” slogans like “all for one and one for all”, “shoulders pulling together” – well you can imagine. And , as in past situations, no one could agree and the meeting was adjourned without a decision.
Members refused to speak to other members. Some turned their backs on Jacob. Others rallied to his side. A few quietly asked for “loans” or proposed “deals.” The virus of capitalism was battling the antigen of socialism. And the sheep were being neglected, for Jacob had much on his mind.
The calls from his two exs became more frequent. He ignored them yet knew it was only a matter of time before they came in person. The next Saturday the ex-life partner arrived as Jacob was sitting in the living room, deep in thought. He did not see her come in (kibbutz doors were not locked in those days). She approached him and, to his surprise, embraced him. “I have thought it over,” she purred.
He was trying to find words to get rid of her when the other ex – his ex-wife, arrived. “I’m entitled to part of it,” she said immediately. Then she spied the ex-life partner. “What is she doing here!” both exclaimed simultaneously. Soon they were shouting out their preferred claims and then turned to physical contestation, rolling around on the floor. Because of his experience with the sheep, Jacob soon separated them.
“You’ll hear from my lawyer,” the ex-wife shouted at him on leaving.
“You’ll hear from my psychiatrist,” his ex-lifer shouted at him.
But before the lawyer or the psychiatrist could contact him, or the kibbutz could come to a decision, Jacob embraced and kissed his sheep goodbye, hitched a ride to Tel Aviv and drew a goodly sum from his bank account. The rest he transferred to another bank so that what remained could not be obtained by the many who would want to get their hands on it.
Rumour abounded as to the whereabouts of Jacob. Some put him in South America. Some in Switzerland. Some say he had been seen in Hong Kong. No one really knew, but if you ask me, I would put my money on Australia.
Señora Beltrán, my seventh-grade teacher and Vice Principal at San Luis Middle, says I’ll see less trouble for yesterday if I do the End of Year Essay Contest. I’m sure she would show mercy if I said no, since I’m in pain and covered in gauze. But I will do it, only because her heart is set on it. (Smiling, Señora?)
The contest is district wide, so I must write it in English, says she. Alright then. My name is Billy Riordan, but kids here call me Blanco Billy, or just Blanco – white. Because my skin is so white. Not beige or pinkish – white. San Luis is hot, dry, desert, so my glowing white epidermis is most days slathered in sunscreen, also white. They named me Blanco not to be mean, but as a simple fact. And it’s catchier than, say, ‘SPF 70.’
I was born in Cork, Ireland, but barely remember it. My Ma got sick from birthing me, then died before I turned two. My Da, Finnian Riordan, soon felt “the island became too small” and moved us here, where he is Head of Psychiatric Services at Arizona State Prison Complex, San Luis. Doom and gloom sounding, yes, but Da says he has bettered some lives and even saved a few.
He wanted a new start somewhere “very unlike Ireland,” and San Luis surely checks that box. Plus, bonus, it’s two towns in one! San Luis, Arizona, USA, where I live, officially ends just past Urtuzuastegui Street, by El Beauty Cosmeticos. Walk south through The Gate and you’re in San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico, at Avenida Carlos Galles. By the KFC.
You do see more dirt streets and peeling paint on the fences’ south side, and dozens of Tiendas Six stores to the north side’s zero. Also, the north side’s fence is low, see-through, not too ugly, but the south’s is burnt orange, taller, thick, with razor wire curlicues on top. Ugly.
But south side, north side, whatever – it’s all the same city, same people, same goodness. We’ll eat our lunch on the south side, dinner on the north, dessert on the south. As for the fences, we showed our papers to The Gate guards long ago; now we just wave and they wave back.
My best friends, Luz and Luiz Reyes, ‘L&L,’ were born on the USA north side but live on the Mexico south, and they’re with me in San Luis Middle on the north. Luiz and I are about done with seventh grade, Luz with eighth. We met on my first day of kindergarten and fast became “Los Tres.” The Three, together everywhere.
Luz and Luis love my Da and have feasted for years on his stories. The first one they heard was of the U.S. Army’s all-Irish Saint Patrick’s Regiment who, during the USA’s 1846 invasion of Mexico, switched to Mexico’s side and became Los San Patricios. That tale of Da’s is a true one; some others, not so much.
Da loves San Luis but says he might someday again live in Ireland. Los Tres would rather he get with Señora Adelina Reyes, Luz and Luiz’s widowed ma. She’s at some level of willing, we think. Kind, funny, pretty like Luz, she’s Head Manager of San Luis’ best hotel. If she couples up with Da, he’ll stay forever. Luz once teased me that a Finnian Riordan-Adelina Reyes marriage would make us stepsiblings. Extra weird now, what with this beautiful new thing between us.
Los Tres, we’ve always read books together. I see us three as Harry, Hermione, and Ron from the Harry Potters. Luiz is Harry. I’m officially smart, if straight A’s mean anything, but Luiz, he is geniusy. (I know, Señora B, ‘geniusy,’ not a real word.)
Luz, she is Hermione. Smart, kind, brave, resourceful, she’d fight ten dragons for Los Tres. Just being near her has made me feel smarter, calmer, better. About school, life, myself, everything.
Me, I’m Ron. Not the bumbling, hot-headed Ron of the earlier books. The later Ron, the loyal, reliable best friend to Luiz/Harry. I’ll do anything for him, and for Luz/Hermione. Most importantly, though, it’s Ron who ends up with Hermione!
Which brings me to yesterday, my greatest day. Its rough ending, I’ll take that every time if I get what came before it, and to hell with any consequences. Not that there will BE any. Right, my favorite English Teacher/Vice Principal?
The lead-up to yesterday was me being a mess. I just turned thirteen and am headed for eighth grade. Good, yes? No, because Luz hit fourteen and is done with us middle school Scorpions. A San Luis High Sidewinder next year, she’ll be without her Los Tres partners. Without me.
Nightmarish near-future scenes blasted my mind. Luz and some ninth (tenth?!) grade boyfriend, making out in El Parque? Me vanishing from her life before I got the nerve to tell her what I’ve known for a year? To save my brain, I would spill it all to her, and I’d do it on the Seventh and Eighth Grade Year End Field Trip. Yesterday.
Our middle school classes aren’t allowed to bus to places just for fun, so added on is a one-hour tour of the Yuma Territorial Prison State Historic Park, circa 1876. Only after that do we all walk under the overpass to swim at Yuma Beach, on the Colorado River. For fun.
Not that the Prison Museum isn’t cool. My mind, though, was occupied by one thing only: Luz. And there she was, coming from the bus behind mine. Medium length hair, black and shining, a mini tail of it stuck out as usual through the back of her San Luis Los Algodoneros cap. She wore huaraches, baggy gym shorts, and her mom’s old Maná t-shirt. Her perfect brown eyes, a shade lighter than her skin and filled with sparkling green flakes, focused right on me – no flitting them around to other kids like she might be missing something.
Oh, quick side note! I phoned Luz earlier and she gave me permission to tell this next part. It was all said in Spanish, but I promise to stay true to every word.
She walked up flashing that smile, the one that kills me every time in the best way. “Que t’al, Memo?” she asked. Que t’al is “How are ya?” and Memo means Billy. Only Luz calls me Memo. “Where’s my little brother?” she asked.
I tried to sound relaxed. “Some friends of Xochitl Perez just told Luiz that she likes him, and he told me the vice versa on the bus. They’re already inside, and I bet he isn’t paying much attention to those cellblocks.”
Luz laughed. “Wow! Luiz the Lover, crushing on someone! Who knew?”
I saw the opening and took it. “I’ve never known you to have any crushes either.”
She hesitated for a second, then smiled. “That doesn’t mean I haven’t had any.”
“Oh yeah? How many, how long, and for whom?” I still sounded calm but I wasn’t breathing.
“For just one person, and I still have it. It’s for you, dummy! Of course it is.”
I don’t think I literally jumped in the air, but I did go full grito with a big old, “Ayyiyiyieee!”
Her response was quieter but came with a smile. “That means you’re vice versa, too?”
“Yes, Luz Reyes! But I wouldn’t really call this a crush. It’s more than that, you know?” I held my breath and hoped she did. She took my hand and gave it a soft squeeze, and my heart did speedy backflips.
“I do know, Memo. We’ve been together most days for the last eight years. This is not a crush.”
“So, are we, um, overdoing it if we use the A Word?” (Yes, Sra. B, the L Word.)
“I say no,” Luz responded. “It IS love. Not the love of adults with jobs, kids, bills to pay. But it’s still real, Memo. You are my first love! Maybe not my last, but who knows, right?”
“True, nobody knows. And I love you too, Luz. Every single tiny thing about you.” I then blurted, “Including your complete digestive tract!” I guess I was dizzy. Luz’s laugh was sweet, so the moment stayed magic.
“Every single tiny thing?!” She laughed again. “You’re getting overheated!”
“No, I mean it. Even the few things you do that can annoy me, those things I love too.”
“I get it. Same here! So, Memo, what now?” She looked at me like she really needed to know.
I responded with a plan that could be called ‘rash,’ a Daily Vocab Word from Sra. Beltran.
“Let’s skip the prison! Stroll the riverwalk for a half hour, then hurry back. Everyone will still be here, and we’ll blend in like we never left. Easy!” Luz gave a just-as-rash “Okay!” and off we snuck. Once in the clear, we held hands. It was near 11 a.m., a cloudless day headed only to the high nineties. We barely reached the path before Luz stopped and announced, “I don’t want to get anxious, waiting for our first kiss. Let’s do it now.” So we did.
Some teeth-knocking at first, but we just giggled and figured it out. A truly perfect moment, etched into my mind for all time. After it, more walking, handholding, skipping stones, stopping for more kisses, sharing memories of eight years of book reads and bike rides and hotel pool swims and whatever else. Also, excited guesses on what the near and farther future might hold for us, individually, and couple-wise, maybe.
We took another kiss break, and Luz asked me to promise to never treat her like property. I did promise, but me knowing she’s her own full and impressive person, I was already there.
We walked more, then saw a path zigzagging down to the water. Below on the bank was an oversized inner tube with a painted ad for the Yuma Hilton, Penitentiary Point. We rolled it into a no-current little cove, then did laugh-filled flips and flops off of it. After, we rested – arms out behind us on the tube, my right one around Luz’s shoulders, her left around mine, our butts in the river, legs over the tube’s other side. We were quiet, happy. Our own little paradise.
Luz suddenly blurted, “Oh man! Everyone’s almost at the beach, I bet. Let’s head back, yes?”
I answered, “Hey, instead of walking, let’s cruise! We’ll get close to the beach, drop the tube off, then walk right up. If we’re asked where we’ve been, we’ll say I left something in the prison.”
Luz agreed. We paddled out into the river’s center and settled in. A bit more kissing, then I closed my eyes and I think Luz did too. After a while, we heard something. A power-walking woman and her little yapper dog.
Luz exclaimed, “She’s not even jogging, and she’s beating us!”
“Yeah, damn. The current is weak.”
“Should we get out and run?”
Aiming for carefree confidence, I said, “Let’s tube it! We’ll get there a little late, and yeah, we might get caught and be in a little trouble. But hey, this is OUR day!”
Brief hesitation from Luz, but she grinned, giggled, and shouted, “Órale, carnal!” That’s like, “Cool, man, hell yeah!” I giggled too.
The fact that our swimming and bellyflopping had washed away all my sunscreen and that my fat bottle of it was in my backpack on the bus, we weren’t thinking about that. We just lazed in our tube, tilting back to look at the endless blue sky or just quietly smiling at each other. Calmly floating away, till at some point we both closed our eyes again and looked at nothing.
We awoke to roars of laughter, excited applause, and that big “ooooohh!” kids do when they know someone is in trouble. Our classmates and teachers, the ones not off looking for us, stared across the water to Luz and me. Luz looked dazed, sleepy. But then she saw me and got a whole other look.
It was major league sun poisoning. I felt like I was in flames but also freezing. My face, arms, and legs were fire engine red, and invisible burning bugs scuttled across my skin. I wanted to yell or moan or scream but got stuck staring at my bubbling left arm and went mute. I turned my burnt head to look at Luz. Her baseball cap’s big brim had shaded her face, plus she’s brown, which helps. A little overheated and dehydrated, but okay.
A swarm of classmates with Carlos Cortez in front yelling, “Blanco Billy is fried!” swam to our tube and brought us in. Lost in my pain, I zoned out, but I do recall an ambulance. Luz got to stay with me in the Emergency Room, thanks to Señora Beltran, who also stayed. Da and Señora Reyes drove up to Yuma in Da’s SUV. Nice one, Da! They sat around while the ER people worked on me with creams and lotions and sponges and softwraps and gauze and whatnot.
I got released hours later and Da drove us all back home. Even after her long and stressful day, Señora Beltrán seemed to enjoy the night drive, chatting it up with Da and Señora Reyes who, up in front, looked like a legit couple.
It’s now the next day, and my body burns, itches, hurts. Honestly, though, this sun poisoning deal was cool. Da and the Señoras likely wanted to yell and scold, but they couldn’t do that in the ER, what with me and my chills, burning blisters, and lost skin. By the time we left, they were too tired to blast us. And so my pain served a purpose, and those two hours Luz and I had together before that pain came, they will warm my loving heart forever.
Okay then! I’ve reached this essay’s length requirement. One last thing, Señora B. Que todo te vaya bien, y por favor, no olvides lo mucho que me gustaste! Cut that only if you must!
Every week an envelope arrives in my mailbox with a twenty-dollar bill inside. Never more. Never less. No note. Post-marks from all over the country. Twenty dollars is not enough. Even before the pandemic it wasn’t enough.
There are five of us: four children and one woman, who is me. The children are nine, five, three and seventeen months. Three of them are girls. The oldest one, Abbygayle, is not mine, well not mine by birth, but I am all she has. The others: Taylor, Tommy, and Taryn, I did give birth to. I am still breastfeeding all of them because I still have milk and twenty is not enough.
A bag of mandarins on sale, two cans of black beans, a box of Giant spaghetti pasta, 52 ounces of orange juice, a box of elbow pasta, Pasta Sauce, Wonder Bread, Giant Concord Grape Jelly, Cheddar Cheese Pringles and one Hershey Bar. That’s twenty dollars and everything but the jelly was sales priced.
Everyone is hungry. Abby and Taylor get free school lunch and I have trained them to steal, we call it “borrowing” as if that makes it okay, toilet paper from their school’s bathrooms. Even if they get caught, and they have, it’s toilet paper and they’re kids and they explained it was only borrowing. And what was the school gonna do? Ban them from the restroom?
Weekends are the worst. When I had a car we’d sometimes turn up like unwanted relatives at church suppers, but he sold my car. Or hid it. Or crashed it. Or did something else that I don’t know about.
He pays the electricity, the water, the mortgage. We are never cold or left in the dark. Twice a year he swoops in with new clothes for the older girls. Like he was Santa or the kind of father who spoils his kids instead of the kind of father who starves them.
“I can’t trust you with money, Jane,” he told me after he’d told me there’d be twenty dollars every week rain or shine come what may. He told me that was plenty. There were only two children then and Tommy was a baby, but it still wasn’t enough. And it was less once Taryn was born and when Abby came to live with me after her mother ended up back on drugs.
I can sort of understand that inclination: reality is just so terrible. So terribly hard.
Every so often a case of beer will appear on the sagging wooden porch, a fifth of Jack, a bag of weed. I know then he’ll be back soon: I am not a mean drunk, I am docile, sweet, the way he likes me.
He, yes, he does have a name, but I don’t like it, and I don’t like him, and I don’t like saying his name. It’s worse to me than the c-word or the n-word or all the other bad words combined. “Twenty dollars is just enough,” he said.
Almost enough to keep us from starving. Certainly enough to keep me from leaving, because where could I go when I had nothing? No money. No car. No outdoor clothes. No shoes. No phone or cell-phone or computer. My family and one-time friends had all written me off long ago. “Stay away from him, Janie,” my dad had said and my mom and my step-father and step-mothers one and two. “He’s bad news,” said my assorted siblings, half-sisters, and step-brothers.
But the heart wants what it wants. Tommy pulls my nightgown down, demanding to be nursed. He is voracious. His teeth are sharp. He will grow up to be like his father, telling women things are enough when they aren’t. I can feel it in my bones and my aching breasts.
During the pandemic he brought a cat home on one of his semi-regular visits: an orange tabby with brilliant green eyes. The children had loved him. Twenty dollars is not enough for cat food let alone visits to the vet. I hope the cat found a better home, one with food and care as well as love. I tell the children that’s what happened and I can see them wondering if they, too, should seek out such a home.
I don’t think he’d care. I’m not sure he’d notice. He never mentioned that cat, never asked after it, not once.
Abby says, “My teacher asked if you or my dad would be coming to the parent-teacher’s conference this year. She said they want to speak to you.” She looks uncomfortable. Her blue smock dress turned top is tight across her chest. There is dirt on her cheek. The soap at their schools is in dispensers so they cannot borrow it. I can’t afford soap any more than I could afford the pet food or that I could afford bus tickets for all of us out of this town.
Twenty dollars is not enough.
Abby and I look down at my slippers, one of which has a sole that flaps, look at my stained red and white housecoat, her eyes continue up to my chapped lips.
“Don’t worry, Mama, I told her no.”
I don’t remember when Abbygayle started calling me Mama instead of Jane. I don’t mind.
For dinner I will heat up some pasta, one small cup each, with sauce. For dessert one of those little squares of chocolate. I wonder if the children have rickets or scurvy. I don’t know what rickets or scurvy look like and twenty dollars does not buy health care. Or Ubers.
In the garage, that does not garage a car, there is an old lawn mower, some clippers and a huge freezer. In season, and sometimes out-of-season, he hunts and sometimes the freezer is filled with venison. Then I use some of the money to buy oil or margarine so I can cook it up. Then the children’s stomachs are full and so is mine.
The freezer is empty now, but there was whiskey on the porch so I know he will be coming by for one of his visits. To check I haven’t seduced the mailman or murdered his children and run off. I used to like whiskey with cola, but twenty dollars doesn’t buy soda, so I open the bottle and drink a glassful neat. And then a second and part of a third before I put the spaghetti on to boil.
Abby is helping Taylor with her homework, which is coloring a picture of a house that looks nothing like our house because it is nice looking and Taylor has given it pink “paint” and drawn smiling parents looking on approvingly as a fantasy Taylor eats an apple.
“Beautiful honey,” I say, “Is that me?” I point to the woman, who seems to be wearing a pink dress that matches the house.
Taylor nods. “And Daddy.”
“Where are my shoes?”
Taylor grabs her drawing and looks down at my feet. “You tell me,” she says, sounding more like my mother than my five-year old daughter.
“Shush,” says Abby and I feel my eyes water. I am coming to a boil just like my store-brand bargain pasta.
More whiskey, I think, more whiskey I want, but then I won’t be able to nurse and the children will go to bed even hungrier.
*
He comes the next night when I am half asleep, the bottle of Jack half-empty. He is looming over me, frowning. “You’re a mess, Janie, and here I am in my best clothes ready to take you dancing.”
It’s a joke, not a joke, on our first date he took me dancing, two-stepping in a self-consciously honky-tonk bar. He is a sharp dresser, he always has been, black jeans with a crease down the middle, a chambray shirt in sky blue, a color he knows is my favorite. He hands are so clean, his nails look like he’s had a manicure, his breath is sweet with the smell of weed and his eyes are deceptively warm and kind. “What’s it going to take?”
“Take?” I say, siting up, moving Taryn off my lap where she’s fallen asleep. “Go off to bed now, honey.”
She starts to say something, but toddles off, ignoring him, her baby-radar on full alert.
“To get you presentable. Jeez.” His tone is steel light as he sits down beside me, hand reaching into his shirt pocket for a spliff. “Any of the whiskey left?”
“A bit.” I hope that’s true. I have been nursing myself on it all day.
“God, you’re a wreck.” His tone has sharpened, but he passes the spliff to me and I inhale. “Little soap and water, bit of shampoo, bit of me time and you could still turn heads.”
I take a deep hit, before passing it back. “Soap and shampoo aren’t in the budget, hon.” I NEVER say hon, but it’s better than saying his name and the whiskey and the weed are working their magic.
He laughs. “Give us a kiss.”
He’s Irish, this man, although he’d lived in the US so long his accent has nearly vanished. He came here as a boy. I met him when he was a bad man and now he’s worse. I kiss him like I loved him though because if I don’t the twenty dollars might vanish.
Or I might.
He fucks me hard. In my pussy. In my ass. In my mouth. He doesn’t touch me with his manicured hands. He doesn’t speak: not lies about love or even encouraging c’mon babies as he used to when we were new to each other. It hurts. The not talking hurts; the not touching hurts; and the sex hurts. He is gone when I wake up, the twenty-dollar bill on the bedside table. And, somehow, that hurts too.
Two boxes of rice, orange juice (because that will keep us from getting rockets!), two cans of tomatoes, a pound of onions, Cha-Ching White Bread, Food Lion Apple Jelly, Colgate Toothpaste (a splurge, but a must), and a Nestle’s Crunch Bar. It seems like less than last week. Every week seems like less.
I have less milk today too, because he insisted on suckling at my breasts, like I was a sow and he was the baby piglet. Tommy strikes me in frustration and Taryn just wails as Taylor and Abby take a sip of orange juice each and share a piece of the cheap bread, toasted with the leftovers of last week’s jelly.
The sun is out and I sit on the porch watching Tommy and Taryn who sit on the ground watching an earth worm. I wonder if they would like it for a snack. They don’t play anymore: they are listless and hollow-eyed despite my milk. My hair is so brittle, I think it might all fall out. It won’t matter, it will be better, more proof that no one else will ever want me like he does.
A car pulls up: poorly painted hot pink with a muffler so loud we all cover our ears. A woman get out, tentative smile on her face: her teeth are bad. “I’m Gina,” she says. “Abbygayle’s mother.” That is unnecessary because the two look so alike I knew it at jump.
Gina, Abby’s mother, looks better than I would have expected. She is not scratching her arms or face. She looks better nourished than I do: her hair is lank, but looks clean. She looks over at Tommy and Taryn. “Yours?”
I nod.
“And Declan’s?”
Hearing his name makes me jump as if I’d been prodded with something electric. “Yes. His.”
Gina looks sympathetic. “Is Abby here?”
“School.”
“Of course!” She lightly slaps her face. “Silly me.”
Taryn has crawled into my lap and I cuddle her as a mother should. “Do you want some water? There’s really nothing else.”
“Christ,” Gina says, but I know she believes me. We look into one another’s eyes and we know. “I’m all right,” she says. “It took me a long time to find you. Couple years.”
I nod. “You’re taking her? Abby?” I keep my face closed; my tone flat.
She nods. “It’ll be okay. I’m clean now, fourteen months, and my mom…she would have taken care of Abbygayle but Declan took her…. thank you, thank you, Jane.”
I nod again. “She’s a good girl. It wasn’t a problem.”
“I’ll wait in the car,” Gina says, after we’ve both silent for a long while. “Does she have a suitcase or….no…. I’ll just…just…”
“Okay,” I say, wishing that he had left me another bottle of whiskey or some weed. I don’t say goodbye. Taylor comes into the living-room where Tommy is drawing on the wall and Taryn is whimpering in her semi-fugue state.
“Abby left with that lady,” Taylor tells me. “Is she coming back?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” Taylor starts crying, but I don’t move to comfort her. I can’t move.
She reaches out a grubby hand, holding a grubby bill. “The lady said to give you this.”
It’s another twenty. I think: a pound of butter, a bar of Ivory Soap, a pound of hamburger, a pack of my favorite Little Debbie Brownies, Cha-Ching Peanut Butter, a gallon of sweet tea, a box of penne pasta and a single perfect Red Delicious Apple. I think what a difference that money would make with only four mouths to feed. Four mouths instead of five.
I fold and unfold the bill, then stuff it into the pocket of my housedress. Twenty dollars isn’t enough.
I had only been back in Toronto a few weeks when I overdosed and came to in the Intensive Care Unit at Keelesdale Hospital. All my money and dope were stolen by the people I was with before I went under, and who’d dumped me from their car just a few blocks from the hospital. I was twenty and wired to heroin and cocaine, and had been for three years, using every day to feed my three-hundred-dollar-a-day habit. To keep from getting dope-sick, I robbed convenience stores and the occasional bank teller. Until a few weeks ago, that is, when I was arrested and convicted on two counts of robbery. My lawyer managed to swing a plea bargain for twenty-two months, and avoided me going into the penitentiary system.
I had previously spent six months in the Don Jail and three in the East Detention for drug possession beefs. This was my first time in a provincial correctional facility, and I did not expect it to be the maximum security Milbrook. I was locked-up every day for twenty-hours, while the remaining four were split between the yard and the range. I was apprehensive about doing time with hardened, violent cons, who were in The Brook because none of the lower security joints would house them – they were considered too high risk. But I quickly adapted, befriending the more notorious offenders from my range, and eventually those from other ranges too, some of whom I knew from the street and others from my time in the Don. It was a matter of reputation to be seen with the higher profile boys, and was the difference between doing easy time, or fighting for every ounce of respect. Whether I won or lost, it hardly mattered; the important thing was not to back down and show fear, which to these guys was an invitation to mess with you.
I spent most of my cell time reading, completing correspondence courses, and writing letters. I hadn’t heard from my younger brother Pino since his first letter, right after he was charged with tossing his ex’s boyfriend over the balcony and nearly killing him. I learned from my mother that Pino was serving time in Guelph and doing well. ‘I can sleep at night knowing you’re both safe,’ she’d written. It’s a hard thing to accept when a mother is more at peace with her children in jail than on the street, though for me the street meant running wild and inching closer to a death by heroin overdose. Or worse, barely surviving the kind of life that made me wish I were dead.
My family resided in Italy, and there wasn’t much our mother could do to help us but worry. The time came, however, when she could no longer stand to be away from us. My father, on the other hand, was against uprooting his family yet again, and would not neglect Angelo and Maria, his two younger children, to help the two older ones, who he believed were old enough to take care of themselves, anyway. Our mother argued that if they did not help Pino and me, we would probably die, an argument our father couldn’t counter, given both of us had already overdosed once – she did not wish to wait around for it to happen again.
Finally convinced, our father sold the shop and apartment. My family arrived in Toronto at the end of July of 1985. It was the first time my father compromised for the benefit of his family, though it wouldn’t be the last.
The days passed quickly in Milbrook, considering I rarely left my cell. It could have been the first day of the month, or the twenty-seventh; it didn’t matter, as each day looked the same, however you turned and shaped it. My cell was ten by ten feet and had a small steel desk and a little window from which at noon exactly, a splash of sun fell on the word ‘fuck’, from fuck the world that some inmate had scatched on it. Instead of meal time, it was fuck time. Of course, a clock wasn’t needed to know what was happening at any given time, in or out of my cell, as after a while, the body became finely tuned and took measurement of the jail, and sensed things, warning when to stay in, or when to come out, and listened to the whispers that passed from cell to cell that told of searches, or when someone was about to get shanked. If you listened closely enough, you could hear the voices moving with the air.
About six months into my sentence I was scheduled to work in the license plate factory. Every day for seven hours I stamped out license plates on an old, industrial press, though I would rather have preferred to stay in my cell to read Dickens, or London, or this guy Bukowski I’d come across in the library, who seemed to have been through the grind himself; or work on the creative writing course I’d recently begun. But a favourable report from the work boss was necessary for the Parole Board to consider an early-release; it showed I could hold down a job and maintain some level of responsibility, which, truth be told, I sorely lacked. I’d never had a job before and my only source of income was crime and street hustle. There was much I needed to learn, if I stood a chance of remaining drug-free, and living past twenty-five, the age many of my friends didn’t reach; guys I’d used and hustled with; went to grade school and played street hockey with; whose mothers still wore black and cried themselves to sleep every night.
I’d managed to stay clean from drugs and alcohol throughout my incarceration, even if heroin and coke could be easily bought with smokes and canteen items. Six months of incarceration had tamed my heroin cravings considerably. I attended the occasional AA meeting also, and went to chapel service every Sunday morning for worship. There was no shame in it, especially not in the Brook, where evil and violence were the dominant themes, and needed to be balanced with Good, or you could lose yourself to the dark side. Besides, where recovery from dope was concerned, a spiritual program was as essential as gravity, the thing that kept me grounded. I felt my energy shifting daily, like the sun, or moon that orients itself around the earth and commands the tides, and so too had God’s light oriented my soul a few degrees to the good; and good begot good. My mind and heart had softened once more, and I prayed and read the bible every day. And good things seemed to happen now, without my asking for it, and I was more grateful for even the little things.
I was called out of work for a visit. It was my first. I was both shocked and relieved to see my parents waiting for me on the other side of the plexiglass partition; shocked that they were there at all, given I believed they were still in Italy; and relieved that my mother was smiling when I entered the nondescript room. My father sat at the stool directly before me, silent in the way only he could be, with a look on his face that suggested he was angry. I was about to say something mundane like, ‘Ciao papa‘,’ when he said,
“Ma, isn’t that George Chuvalo over there?”
I looked over to the stool at the far end of the room and sure enough, there was the three-time Canadian Heavyweight Champ, while on my side of the partition was his son Jesse. The elder Chuvalo was engrossed in some narrative, while the younger listened intently, and then they both laughed, and I wondered how it felt to have that kind of relationship with your father, one where he actually spoke to you, and gave you advice about things, and laughed at your jokes, and said he loved you now and again. I wondered what it was to have a father and a dad.
“E’ Lui, si,” I said, suddenly feeling sadder than when the visit had begun.
George was, of course, hard to miss, being the face of Canadian boxing. His son, on the other hand, had more cause for anonymity. Offenders pestered him about his famous dad, and talked shit behind his back about his family’s struggles with heroin, crap they’d heard in the news, or had contributed themselves through prison yard gossip, passed along like currency from offender to offender. It was difficult enough getting by in this place, without the extra negative attention.
“When did you get here, papa? In Toronto, I mean?”
My father just looked at me without answering. It was his way of controlling us and making you believe you’d done something wrong; of keeping his family on edge and making everything about himself. My father blamed me, you see, for all our family’s struggles, making communication with him almost impossible. And when we did speak, it was strained and forced, awkward even; I had to think hard about the right thing to say. Of course, I understood his animosity toward me; any father would be disappointed whose son had made the kind of poor life choices I had; and besides, what father would be happy with two of his children behind bars. It was much easier to just talk about other people than it was to speak about things that really mattered, the obvious, difficult conversations that might have suggested he was partly to blame for my family’s problems.
“Mamma, why didn’t you mention in your last letter that you were coming here?”
“Vollevamo farti una sorpresa,” my mother said smiling. “A surprise. You look good, Michele. It shows on your face.”
Though she smiled, I saw tears roll from her eyes, eyes that watched me closely, seeking the place where only a mother knows to look, to confirm what I’d claimed in all my letters to her: That I was clean and sober, and had found spirituality once again. It was Faith that gave my mother strength to carry on, and the will to support me and Pino. Knowing I was on a spiritual path validated her efforts. She believed it was her responsibility to teach us about God, protect us from the Devil’s snares, and this from the time Pino and I were alter boys at St. Nick’s; before even, when she tucked us in at night and taught us prayers. I hadn’t yet learned to ride a bike, but I could say the Our Father, Hail Mary, and the entire Rosary, in English and Italian. She was good, my mother was, and knew that in our hearts, so were her sons.
My father continued alternating his attention between me and George Chuvalo, seemingly reassured by the boxer’s presence in the same jail. And not for the man’s social status. It’s true that my father was a proud and private man, and would never tell another person that his boys were criminals and junkies; he was embarassed even to think about it; but here he was now, sitting next to a man, a father, a Champion no less, who’d endured the same emotional blows as him, suffered the same despair and domestic upheaval, and whose son was also a drug addict – my father was reassured by this, and for the moment, didn’t feel quite so alone and helpless.
I instinctively wanted to say how sorry I was for having disrupted their lives again. I’d carried the guilt of my family’s misfortunes since my first fix of heroin at the age of seventeen. Seeing my parents now, I was helpless to deny the depth of my humiliation, and my eyes welled with memories of years wasted on the streets. I understood in that moment the profoundness of their sacrifices; the lengths to which they went in order to keep me from sinking deeper, and deeper still, into my addictions. I wanted desperately to ask their forgiveness; but the words seemed unauthentic in this room, and undeserving. I looked at my parents from behind the glass and saw their innocence, the values they’d attempted to teach me, their goodness. And then I looked to myself and knew that I belonged here, in this shit-hole they called the Brook, a supermax jail likened to Alcatraz. But my parents did not belong, not even as visitors. They were the victims of my recklessness and deserved more than to see their eldest son incarcerated, wearing jailhouse blues and a number on his chest, when their hope for me was to simply be a good man, find a decent job and raise a family, everything I wanted for myself, in fact, but struggled to acquire.
My visit ended and I was escorted to my cell by a Correctional Officer. The mechanical door slammed behind me and I lay on my bunk and picked up John Fante’s Ask The Dust and I read, and read, but the words were merely distant whispers, and melted with thoughts about my life outside these walls, about making my parents proud and getting a job and birthday parties; of hopeful things, the kind of stuff that made one vulnerable in a place like this, where distractions got you killed.
The jail noises intruded into my consciousness, white noise like the mechanical whir of the fan, and the opening and closing of cell doors, and the C.O.’s falling footsteps during count, looking into cells for signs of weapons and narcotics and suicide. The hour I’d spent with my parents earlier in the day was another world entirely, another mental time zone, and was now only a distant memory. I felt myself adjusting to the range activities and sounds, like when I was on the street and got ready to rob a bank, my awareness heightened, vigilant, my conscience turned off. I felt my prison attitude returning to my shoulders and chest, now hardened from months of pushing free weights in the yard; felt it on my skin, like armour, or psychosis. I was two people. I was my mother, with her kindness and generous spirit, her soft innocence and light, and hope for a better future. And I was my father, with his ego and defensiveness, his cold, hard demeanour, and dark half in times of insecurity and threat. I was both victim and assailant.
The 11:00 pm count began. We were locked into our cells until 6:00 pm of tomorrow. I looked out the small window, into the obscure night, and allowed my thoughts to wander into a kind of meditation and I prayed the Rosary and offered up my good intentions. I read some Bukowski and knew that he was writing about himself, as the despair that oozed from his words was my despair when I was homeless, or dope sick, or broke and dope sick. I read a blurb of his that said it was important not to try at things, that you wait and if nothing happens, you wait some more. Yet, all I’d done in my life was wait; for inspiration, love, financial security, vocation, freedom; and nothing came but more wasted time that stretched into days and months and years. I was tired of waiting for things to happen, of people and circumstances to control my life. It was time I took back that control. I picked up my pen and wrote a title for a story I’d begun to write for the Creative Writing course: More Wasted Time, by Michael Amatulli. I finished the story late in the night, and in the silence and stillness of the range, before I went to bed, wrote the final words to close the story:
The End
photo: William James Topley, Carleton County Jail, 1895
each ripple a transient brushstroke beneath the moss-draped trees, where branches tap with grandmotherly fingers
the light filters in patches, a muted backdrop of greens and browns, where shadows pool like spilled ink,
perfumed by damp earth with the faintest hint of floral
water lilies drift lazily,
their delicate blooms in smudges of color floating like fragments of a dream
while dragonflies dart in silver trails,
the cypress knees rise from the depths, though gnarled and ancient these silent sentinels guard the primordial realm as their shapes soften in the encroaching mist
the boat slips through reeds and rushes, each swaying stalk, a whispering brush against the hull’s weathered side, a rhythmic cadence in this verdant sanctuary
birds echo an intermittent soundtrack, flitting from treetop to water’s edge, a chorus that punctuates the stillness, brief notes of bright clarity in the ancient, unhurried palette
each moment a detail in an unspoken narrative, painted in hues of patience and mystery, as I drift through this living tableau, the swamp’s quiet artistry
Walking into Starbucks, Katherine spotted Ted sitting alone by the window. He seemed preoccupied and did not look up even when she pulled a chair closer to join him. Looking out the window, he tapped his cardboard cup lost in thought.
“Did the meeting go well?” she ventured.
Ted turned and smiled. “Oh, yes, all good. She approved the budget. I’m just a little…” he shook his head with a bewildered sigh.
“What is it? You feel OK?”
“I’m fine. Well, not really. Something strange happened today. Eerie.” He paused, twisting his cup left and right on the table, before looking up. “I saw myself today.”
“Saw yourself?”
“Yes. I saw myself. Watched myself. But not me now. Me fifty years ago.”
She leaned forward. Ted was never given to whimsy or fanciful stories. The flat soft tone of his voice was troubling. “What do you mean?”
“I met with Bess Andre at the Fairmont at eleven. We went over the budget. She liked what she saw and said she just needs this month’s bank statements to approve it. I told her she’d get them end of the month. Meeting went great. No questions. So we chitchit-chatted a bit, took a few pictures, then I headed out.”
“OK,” Katherine said softly.
“Well, I parked down on Pine. So, I crossed California to walk down Mason and froze. I just froze. In the driveway plaza of the Mark Hopkins, there was a 1973 white VW bug. What caught my eye was the rear fender. It had a crescent-shaped crease, a dent. I had a white ’73 VW with the same dent in the same fender. That was my car! But new. I drove that thing into the ground back in the Eighties. I sold it for junk for a hundred bucks to a friend who wanted parts. But this morning it was back, brand new but with that dent I got just after I bought it. The trunk lid was up, and I could this guy arranging things. And he was left-handed like me. He held the lid up with his right hand the way I used to. And he wore his watch on this right arm like I do. And it was one of those thick leather cuff watchbands from the Seventies. I had a band like that and the same watch. Gold with a black face. And he was wearing what I wore then – Dingo boots, flared jeans, black turtleneck, tweed jacket with leather elbow patches. And he had mirror aviator sunglasses. My girlfriend Toni got me a pair for my birthday that year. I tell you it was me. Then it hit me. The Mark Hopkins. April 1974. My sister and her roommate flew out from Wisconsin on spring break and stayed there. My friend Ric and I took the girls around all week. Fisherman’s Wharf. Chinatown. The Cannery. End of the week I drove them to the airport. So I watching myself packing up their stuff in my car at the Mark Hopkins getting ready to take them to SFO in April 1974. I swear it was me. Same car. Same clothes. Same watch. Same sunglasses. It was me!”
She nodded, sensing his unease.
“I could see the license plate, but who remembers their number from fifty years ago, right? But I know I have old snapshots. I’m sure they’d show the plate. So I picked up my phone to take a picture. Just then, the kid turned to face me. And just as I snapped the picture, he was gone. Nothing. He was gone. The car was gone. Just like that. Here, look.”
Ted held up his phone, scrolling through pictures. “Look, this is us last night. This is Bess and me this morning. And this last one is the picture I took in the driveway of the Mark Hopkins. No VW, no driver. Just that delivery van in the background. But I swear that guy and that car were there. And it was me. I saw me in April 1974. I Googled it. Easter was the 14th that year. The girls flew home that Friday. Would have been April 19, 1974. Just before noon.”
“Experience anything like that before?”
“Never. You know me. I taught physics. Only believe what I can see and touch. But this today. The car and the guy. If I saw one separately, OK, a weird coincidence. But the guy dressed like me and my car in front of the Mark Hopkins? That was me, April 1974 getting ready to drive the girls to the airport. Just too many coincidences at once. Look, if I saw that car last week in a parking lot in Houston I would freak. Looks like my old car with the exact same dent. That would be something in itself. But that car in the same spot fifty years later with someone dressed like me, same build, left-handed? Same sunglasses, turtleneck?”
“What are you going to do? You seem so rattled. I’ve never seen you like this before. Are you sure you’re OK?”
He waved his hand. “I already booked an appointment with my internist. Maybe it’s the new meds. I’ve had some intense dreams lately. Vivid lucid dreams. Maybe that’s it. It must be my new meds.” He nodded as if repetition would reassure him. “That must be it. I hope.”
“What’s wrong? It was just a flash maybe. Like a memory. You walked by the Mark and remembered your sister. Just a vivid memory. You have a good memory.”
“I dunno. . .” he muttered softly. “I keep thinking of my grandfather. I flew home for Christmas one year and visited him at the VA. He was seeing things, too. Dementia. When I walked in the room he kept calling me Johnny. ‘Johnny, where you been? Johnny, you OK? You all better?’ My grandmother told me he thought I was his army buddy Johnny who died of flu in 1918. She tried to explain to him that I was Teddy, his grandson. ‘You remember, Moira’s boy?’” Ted’s eyes watered, and his voice quavered. “Katie, I will never forget him looking around confused and panicked, asking, ‘Moira? Who’s Moira?’ He didn’t remember my mom. His own daughter. He died a few months later. I never forgot that.”
She reached across the table and took his arm. Suddenly, and for the first time since she met him, he began to look his age. “It was nothing, just a flash. An episode. We all have moments like that. It was nothing.”
“I dunno,” he said. “You hit seventy-four and something like this happens, and you wonder if it’s a sign of what’s coming. The start of something.”
“Look, you put that budget together, and two CPA’s and a lawyer went over it and never asked us a question. I’m sure you’re OK. I never saw any changes, and how long have we known each other? Just see your doctor about the meds.”
He forced a smile, then shook his head. “But I swear that Volkswagen and that guy were there. They were real.” He pointed out the window. “See that Volvo and the crossing guard? As real as those two.”
They both watched as the light changed, and the crossing guard waved at the Volvo driver who nodded and pulled forward to make a slow right onto Folsom.
“Hey, Teddy, get the girls off on time?”
“Yeah, no problem. Ran late as usual, but their flight was delayed twenty minutes. Saw them off. Jan said she had a great time. You made a big impression on her.”
“Well, too bad she’s in Wisconsin.”
Ted looked up from his beer.
“You know, Ric, something really weird happened today. Like Twilight Zone weird.”
“What?”
“OK, I’m at the Mark Hopkins packing up the car. You remember all the stuff they bought in Chinatown? I wondered if they could get it all on a plane. So, anyway, I’m packing up the trunk in front of the hotel, trying to make sure I don’t break anything. And I see this old guy out of the corner of my eye run across the street, and he stops dead and stares at my car. Like he’s never seen a Volkswagen before. Just standing there staring. For a second I thought it was my grandfather. Built like me, same hair, but older, you know. He had a moustache, though, and my grandfather doesn’t.
“I thought he must be looking at something behind me, so just kept packing things.
Then, and this is the strange part, he picked up something. Looked like a piece of black glass, size of a postcard. He holds it up, and from the corner of my eye; I see it light up like a miniature TV. So, I turn to get a good look, and he vanishes. In a flash he’s gone. He didn’t run away, he vanished. I mean if he turned to run, I would see his back, right? One split second he’s there, then he’s gone. How do you explain that?”
“You’re the physics major, Einstein, not me.”
“Hell, I just stayed in school long enough to dodge the draft.”
Ric pointed to the sunglasses on the bar. “Maybe it was those.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh the guy was real, but he was probably a mirage, a reflection. The guy was there all right. But he was behind you, standing in the doorway maybe. Someone opens the glass door, and his image is reflected and you catch it in your glasses. You said you only saw him in the corner of your eye, right? So you move your head a few inches or maybe someone closes the door, and the image disappears. He was a reflection, uh?” Ric suggested, cocking an eyebrow.
“This guy was no reflection. He was 3D. I could see his necktie. And he had some kind of pin or button on his lapel. There was substance there, texture. Flesh and blood real. He was there.”
“Hey, weird things happen.” Ric tapped his temple. “These things aren’t cameras. You see things and your brain processes them. Or doesn’t. I tell you about my wallet last week? I swore I lost it. I always keep it on my nightstand. Last week, I’m getting ready for work and can’t find it. OK, I left it in my jeans. Not there. I check my jacket. I look under the bed, on top of the dresser, the jackets in the closet. I pull the nightstand from the wall to see if it slipped on the floor. I check the sofa in the living room. Then it hit me. I must have left in the car when I went to the drive thru to cash a check. I run to the car, look all over. Not there. I search the bedroom again. Phone rings, so I run down to the kitchen. It’s Jessica. I tell her I must have left my wallet at her place. She tears her place apart, nothing. I hang up, go upstairs, and there’s my wallet on the nighttable. It was there all the time. A black wallet on a white table. How could I miss that?”
Ric glanced down at Ted’s change on the bar, “Hey, Deal of the Day! Trade you a buck for a dime” He jerked his thumb toward the pay phone. “I gotta call and see when my car’s ready.” He tossed a bill on the bar and slid the dime into his palm. “Be right back.”
Ted picked up his sunglasses, watching the reflection of the bottles, then put them on, turning left and right, trying to catch sight of the jukebox behind him.
“Can you believe it?” Ric muttered when he returned. “Twenty-eight-fifty for a new tire. Believe that? But, hey, you don’t like my mirage idea? Got one better for you, Einstein. It was the Dodge guy.”
“Dodge guy?”
“The guy who hit you. You said you were walking toward your car and saw a guy in a black Dodge back into your bug, bang the fender, and drive off. You chased after him, but he never stopped. So today he spots you and the car, and he freaks. Maybe he stands there wondering if he should do the right thing and apologize and give you his number? Then he decides to runs off. Something makes you turn, and you think you still see him, but he was already gone. You did not see him, you just remembered him standing there. Just a memory flash. Cops and lawyers will tell you eyewitness testimony is always shaky. Think of magicians. They can fool a whole crowd with ‘now you see it, now you don’t.’” He twisted his palm back and forth like an illusionist with a trick coin.
Ted shook his head, “I dunno, he was really there when I looked up. At least for a second. And then he was gone. And something else. I felt he knew me. Like we were connected somehow.”
“Course he knew you. His Dodge connected with your bug, remember? Look, my car won’t be ready until three. Let’s grab a round.”
Ted sighed, then slid the dollar across the bar and motioned for two more Buds.
The End
Image by Rundvald: Volkswagen 1300 “Beetle” 1960s from Wikimedia Commons
Betty shows me her scar. Dark purple it runs six inches down her belly. She says it’s ugly and I say it’ll fade in time.
Drove through town on my way back. Jap surrender is all over the news so people hold up two fingers for victory. It’s when I get away from that crowd. I hit the gas and can’t let off. Car speeds up but still can’t let off so I hook my arm under my leg and sit up hard pulling my foot up with me.
Stopped on the side. Scary as hell. Take some breaths and try my leg. It works so I pull away. Slow this time and make it back here.
Martins are outside. He won’t stop talking. I tell them her tests are all normal and she’ll be home with the baby in a week. That little dog stares like it wants an answer but I don’t have any. All I have is the question. Why did my foot stick like that again?
That time with Betty in the car. She snaps at me to slow down. My leg unsticks but she’s still mad so I say we have to burn off the factory oil. She gives me a look and then we go on like everything’s normal. And it was. Until today.
I sat in here earlier. Curtain stops high in its arc. Falls back and starts all over again. That crowd just before my leg froze. Dancing. Hugging. Almost got out but didn’t. Their faces. Such happiness.
I should be the happiest guy in the world. War’s over. I have a son and wife. That job back home waiting. We can do it all now just like we planned so what’s wrong?
Haven’t looked at this notebook since Kimbolton. At the bottom of my grip but I put it aside. Need to be there with donuts by eight. That powdered kind she likes.
In bed early but then comes a dream. One I never had before. Someone I don’t know. Saying something I can’t hear. I try hard to listen but this roar in my ears blocks it out and then there I am again. Awake. Soaked in sweat.
Notebook feels different in my hand now. All soft and beat up.
Maybe if I read through I can put that year in the past. Back where it belongs. Or find an answer. That answer I need.
And maybe that’s why my foot stuck today. It’s telling me to get out now while I still have the chance. If I can’t fix this before they come home that’s what it has to come to anyway.
May 10, 1944
At intake Doc Spencer wants to know if I ever froze up before. Says if I come up with anything to write it down so here goes.
We’re on a weekend pass in Piccadilly. Kal says one of the Red Cross girls is giving him the eye so we all laugh. He says watch this and goes back for a refill but it’s about then I decide to head out on my own anyway.
You might think Piccadilly Circus is full of clowns and elephants but it’s just a big city intersection. An old guy tells me Park is on the right so I go that way keeping right.
London has a smell. Dirt and rubble but you can’t really say what that is. Burnt brick. Not fresh burnt old burnt.
Buds on the trees. Without all the big guns you might think there’s no war at all.
Further in is a bandstand in a clearing. No one there so I sit on a bench. A couple comes through. They keep going so I stay. It’s quiet.
Then I wake up and don’t know where I am. I try to get up but can’t. I try again but still can’t so I just sit there and it comes to me. There’s no war on that bench but as soon as I get up it starts all over again.
A woman and kid come at me. She has a newspaper. Makes like she’s folding it and pushes it to the sky. I figure she wants me to make an airplane for that kid so I take it and start folding.
It looks pretty good but when the kid tosses it it crashes. I’m all set to try again with less pages but that woman looks at me now like I’m one sorry ass plane builder. Maybe the worst she’s ever seen.
She drags the kid away. I think what the hell was that all about and take off to find the guys.
May 11, 1944
An RC girl says no GI issue in the dining room so look in my closet. I do and find a shirt and some pants there I have to roll the cuffs up on to keep from tripping.
I set my tray on a table when that same RC girl brings me a coffee and sits down with her own cup. She looks at the wraps on my hands so I say frostbite. I guess that’s her cue because then she starts up about perspex waist ports on the new B-17s. It’s kind of funny but she knows her stuff so I listen.
I was going to give Spencer what I wrote but then left it here. I tell him instead about not being able to get up from that bench. He says maybe I don’t want to. Big difference but I let it go. Spencer’s like that mad scientist in the Frankenstein movie so now I’m looking for Igor to walk in.
He asks if I like it here. I almost say best damn flak house ever but don’t. Then he asks if I have any questions so I ask when I can get back with my crew but he don’t answer that. Next time he wants one time up there when I didn’t think I’d make it back.
He tells me to lose the wraps. So much for frostbite. Frostbite of the brain and they all know it.
I know now why I didn’t take what I wrote. It was my file there on his desk. Just one more thing to use against me.
So here’s the deal. I’ll tell Spencer what he wants. Maybe even write it down but what I put in this notebook is my business. Then I’ll decide if he needs to hear it.
May 13, 1944
They say ignorance is bliss. Which means the less you know the happier you are. It follows then that learning something new costs some happiness. But people learn new things all the time so that means your whole life you become less happy.
The inverse then has to mean forgetting things brings back some happiness. So why remember anything? Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I don’t have to.
Most people don’t go up in airplanes to drop bombs on people.
Spencer wants one time when I thought I wouldn’t make it back but that would be every time. Add to that it’s all mashed up in my head now anyway. What sticks out I guess is the first one. When I first found out what I’d gotten myself into.
We thought it might be a milk run like they sometimes give a new crew but then they pull back the curtain. Schweinfurt is deep inside Germany. Our mission is to destroy their ball bearing factory. Stopping production there can end the war. That’s what they say.
Last time there in the fall our group lost a quarter of its planes. But you can’t know anything until you do it yourself and this was my first mission so I was ignorant. Not happy. Just ignorant.
We take off at dawn and don’t cross the Channel until 1140. The bomber stream goes as far as you can see in front and behind.
About a half hour over France some Mustangs show up in my waist port. I point them out on the headset and we’re all glad they’re there. Then they’re not. We learn later some fighters lured them off leaving us to face their main force alone.
Some chatter on the headset. Then Whitman on top turret yells they’re coming in a voice so high I don’t recognize it. He opens up with his Double Fifty and the rest of us do too.
They come head on rolling over while firing. Then they hit the group to our right and I see three forts go down. One with its tail blown off and two trailing smoke.
Some chutes open below. I watch as far as I can follow.
Closing on Schweinfurt their ground Eighty-Eights open up. Flak pings off our hull over the engine and wind noise. Black puffs appear out my waist port and inside the close ones I see that red glow. What they call the red monster and now I know why.
Our bombs are gone but it’s still three hours back to England. They had time to land and re-arm so the only question is when. Just before the Channel they come from all sides.
I stay on one all the way in. He’s gone when I realize my body is up in the air behind me. I land on the casings and see Kal yelling at me through a cordite haze.
Coastal batteries throw up one last barrage. I see one fort in the distance take a direct hit. There it is one second and gone the next. Then the Channel appears beneath us.
Kal says when I locked on that FW I kicked him in the head. He thinks he’s hit but then sees my legs up in the air so I tell him I’ll keep my feet on the deck next time.
Back on my bunk not sure how long. That’s when it comes to me if that’s number one how will I ever make it through twenty nine more.
May 14, 1944
Tough session with Spencer today. Only thing I say about Schweinfurt is watching those chutes go down. He wants to know about that so I say it was like them passing into another world.
That perks him up and I want to bash his head in with that paperweight on his desk. He says I’m here to help. I say you’re here to get me back into a B-17 so just sign my paperwork and I’ll be on my way.
He asks about that other world. I say it’s a world of hate. Farmers down there waiting to pitchfork us while the guys under those chutes watch us go on without them. All they got anymore is that world of hate waiting below.
Next time he wants to hear about my freeze-up. Says I should make use of the facilities here. That I should enjoy myself. So how do I do that with my crew back there carrying all the load. I say I will.
May 16, 1944
I take a shortcut to the driving range and get lost. That’s when it comes to me to just tell Spencer that’s it. I’m done flying. So I’m all set to do just that when I ask myself who I’ll be then. A quitter for one thing and that ain’t so easy to fix once it’s done.
I don’t tell him I got lost. Who gets lost in a clump of trees? Then something pops into my head. I tell him about this buddy when I’m a kid and how at the start of the school year he’s not there. Then I find out he’s held back and I wonder if he’s stupid.
Spencer asks what it means and I ask him why it has to mean anything. He says my buddy got left behind. Same as those guys under the chutes.
I see where he’s going so I say it’s different with me because I plan to catch up. I’ll just volunteer for extra missions when I get back. When you give me the okay. I say that last part like a question but then he switches to my freeze-up.
Montdidier. No fighters all the way there and back so I’m looking out at some clouds thinking this one’s in the bag. We’ll be back in an hour with more than a quarter of our missions done. That’s when they hit us.
He asks what I think then. I say it ain’t fair and keep going.
I’m on one but then here comes another. Cannons flash round in my sight so I give him a burst. He keeps coming so I give him another and then another. And then. My fingers won’t let off. I stay on it until it gets so hot it jams. Back on the ground my fingers are still stuck so the medics come on to pry me off. I say it’s frostbite. They take me to the infirmary. And that’s it.
He makes a note and checks my file. Then he asks about what they call me back home.
I have to think on that one and tell him it’s like those clouds before the fighters jumped us. One time instead of my chores I get caught laid back on this hill looking up at the clouds. All those shapes. So my little sister Tippy gets a kick out of it and starts calling me Leisure. Then they all start up.
He asks if it bothers me and I tell him no. I do my job. Like my football team back in school. We were good because we all did our jobs. Same with my crew. Ask any of them. That freeze-up just snuck up on me but it won’t happen again.
He asks if I’ve written home. I say not until I know what happens. He says I should. I say maybe and we leave it at that.
May 17, 1944
Been here a week now. He wants to know about Betty.
I tell how she lives in St. Louis and don’t want to live in Memphis. How she won’t listen when I explain about my job. I tell him about our last day in Forest Park and how I wish it went better.
What I don’t tell him is I decide right then and there to write her as soon as I leave his office. So I do and tell her we’ll find a way to make it work.
Funny. Right after I mail that letter I want one back and then the next morning one shows up forwarded from Kimbolton. Before even reading mine she answers me almost word for word everything in it.
Spencer says I should mix in more here so I say I’m going to toast marshmallows Friday night. Colored signs everywhere. Punch and cupcakes for all.
May 18, 1944
He wants me to go back through my missions. Wish I wrote them here all along.
We skip a day after Schweinfurt. Then go three straight. Kassel. No Oranienburg is first. Aircraft factory. We peel away from the main group as a diversion. No losses.
Then Kassel. It was destroyed in February but they rebuilt it underground. We lose one fort while our sister group loses three. Third day is to a V-1 rocket site at Sottevast. Some Focke Wulfs and light flak. Whole mission lasts only four hours.
Next day I sleep in but then keep popping up like I’m missing something. That’s the day I meet Fred. He’s already got fourteen missions and I can’t even imagine that many.
He asks what I think about killing innocent civilians down there. I say it’s our job and he nods. Then he wonders what it’s like getting hit with a five hundred pounder and I tell him there’s nothing to wonder about because there’s nothing left. At that he just stares with that far off look.
Number five is to Landesberg outside Munich. A new type Messerschmidt is built there. Some groups from Italy are supposed to link up but all I see is what looks like the whole German Air Force.
Rail yards at Hamm-Bonn is six. I’m looking at a runway crack thinking that concrete was poured way too fast. It’s about then we’re all wondering what happened to the land invasion. Even the brass knows we can’t win this war by ourselves.
Seven is to Berlin. Seven hundred forts and nothing goes right. High winds and clouds the whole way. Over the target we lose five forts and count very few chutes.
Fifty men. Same chow line. Throwing around the same football. Gone. Just like that. That’s when they give us the two-day pass to London.
I try to make an airplane for that kid.
On the train back people out the window do the normal things people do. And we feel normal too after our thousands of miles traveling together. Difference is we ain’t in a goddamn airplane.
We get back. First the quiet. Then all the gear gone from the middle bunks. End crew ignores us until one pipes up. Went down yesterday. No chutes reported.
Fred’s crew. I hope he’s a POW somewhere but there’s a better chance he’s not. I think at least he won’t have to worry anymore about killing civilians.
That look on his face. It’s like he knew but then how could he not? You can’t keep rolling the dice and expect it to not come up snake eyes. The law of averages. It has to catch up.
Berlin’s the first time my hands freeze. I’m plugged in so I figure it’s a bad connection. I take my gloves over to the equipment chief and he hands them back saying they’re fine. I think he’s telling the truth.
May 19, 1944
I try telling about Fred but then don’t have that much to say. That’s when Spencer brings up me taking the Pentothal. Nothing to it he says. It relaxes you so you can talk.
And spout off any dumb thing in your head. What he’s really saying is I have to take it if I want back with my crew while at the same time saying it’s my choice. Funny how that works. He says to sleep on it.
Then I go to the marshmallow toast. GIs and RC girls. A crowd at the fireplace cooking marshmallows.
It feels tight in there and then something jumps the rails. This RC girl acts like I should say something. I try to smile but that’s wrong so I go for the punch. Then I think I might throw up so I head for the door and make it outside.
I lean against a bicycle rack when this other RC girl comes out and offers me a cigarette. I see now she’s that same one from my first day.
I tell her I don’t smoke so she lights up and lets out a long contrail.
She checks her watch a few times and asks if I want to go for a ride. Then she hops on a bike and tells me to grab one. Next thing I’m following her down the driveway and I don’t think anything’s ever felt so good as riding that bicycle through the night.
Almost bright out except for the tree shadows. We go a long way and then turn down a lane that ends at a fence. She hops over and heads off into a field. She stops to check her watch again so I strike a match and ask if she needs to be somewhere. All she says back is give it a minute.
You feel the hum before hearing it. Then that rumble that gets louder until the ground starts shaking. A Lancaster comes over the tree line followed by dozens more. It’s RAF since they only fly at night but she knows that.
I say Limey and she says blimey.
She’s from New York so I call her a Yankee. She says that’s what her husband calls her only he shortens it to Yank. I ask where he is now and she points up to that bomber stream. So that’s it. We’re here to see him off.
Her eyes stay on that stream so I shut up and watch too. I also watch her face and it reminds me of something. Something I lost track of.
Back at the house all she says is I got heart and goes in.
There’s still that answer I owe Spencer. I can turn down the Pentothal. Get a ground job maybe. Or I can take it and try to get back in the war. After being out in that field earlier turns out there’s not much choice after all.
May 20, 1944
Bug Juice. Truth serum. I say I don’t need that stuff to tell the truth and that sets him off but good.
He says it’s not to find out if I’m lying but to reveal what we don’t know. Think of it as peeling back the flesh on an infection to flush it out. He’s wound up pretty good now so I tell him I already said okay. Let’s just do it.
I report in the morning to a small clinic behind the main house.
May 27, 1944
What’s fair? Kids say that’s not fair to each other. Some people say we lost the game but we played fair. And then for others it don’t matter at all.
Been a whole week since writing here. Sent another letter to Betty. Told her I want to take a trip together when I get back. And it don’t matter where.
I knew we were killing people by the thousands. Guess I had to see for myself.
I want to go hunting again. Not to kill anything. Just to be there. I want to see Betty again and see how we do together. I want to live a little more like anyone else in the world and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But there’s no guarantee. That’s the important part. Some die and the rest go on. There’s nothing fair about it. The other side is you have to live with yourself and if you can’t do that then you don’t have anything anyway.
My plan to catch up is over. Those guys must be halfway through by now. They’ve gone on and I hope they keep going on just like I plan on doing when the time comes.
May 28, 1944
If your mask fills with puke you choke. But you can’t pull it off. No oxygen so you fight it back down. You fight the FWs too. But then something wants to take you away. You want to go but you have to stay on that Fifty. So you do it and then do it again. And keep doing it. Until you don’t.
Spencer reads from his notes. He says some remember everything under the Pentothal while others like me almost nothing.
Yelling over the headset. 17s falling out of the sky. The cold. Spencer says it’s okay to cry and I tell him why it’s not.
Then he brings up Jimmy Stewart. He flew the lead fort to Berlin that day. They say with a movie star leading us we shouldn’t mind following. I remember all this.
After the mission we find out they turned him back over France but then we see a newsreel of him getting the Croix de Guerre for leading us to Berlin. It’s a crap lie and Stewart gets cussed out pretty good that day as just another newsreel hero.
But that’s not fair either and I tell Spencer why. Stewart’s flown more combat missions than all those other newsreel heroes put together. Maybe he did have engine trouble but that’s not the point anyway. And then there it is staring me right in the face. It’s not fair. I yell it out and wait for an answer but nothing.
Fair is for another time. Another place. And who am I to judge what’s fair anyway? Maybe those newsreel heroes know something I don’t. Maybe they know not to get themselves in a situation where they freeze-up. Maybe they’re doing the best they can with this filthy rotten mess and that’s all you can expect of anyone.
Only other thing I remember is getting up from that table soaked in sweat.
May 29, 1944
Got my okay today. A new directive says B-17 crews will now be nine men instead of ten. Half the waist-gunners will train on the radio and split time between it and the Fifty. Spencer thinks I can be one of these new radio-waist gunners.
He says my problem is all the waiting. Too much time to think so doubling up on the radio suits me better. I’ll be on the Fifty when the fighters come but the rest of the time will be all dots and dashes.
It’s up to the brass at Kimbolton but with my experience you can bet they’ll find a place for me.
Only thing I can’t figure is how much to tell Betty. In my letter today I only say I had some down time. I don’t like lying to her but if I try to explain the censors will leave in some and block out the rest. It’ll only confuse her more.
So that’s where I leave it. With her and me it’s all about the future anyway.
Image by U.S. Air Force personnel during World War II, date unknown
I want to tell you about a girl named Kiara. She lived a long time ago, in a small cabin just outside a mountain village. She had black eyes and a long black braid that brushed the top of her leather belt. Every morning, Kiara woke in her cot in the warm kitchen, the dead embers from last night’s supper in the hearth beside her bed, and stretched her arms and legs as she yawned. Then she sat up and gazed out the window, where, across the valley and half-way up the next mountain, an immense waterfall fell from a great green cliff. The water roared, and Kiara thought it said, “Don’t come near me, little girl! I’m too big for you.” The water was blue at the top but turned white as it picked up speed, bubbling and frothing like a rabid dog. Behind the waterfall was the entrance to a cave that the villagers called the Cave of Emptiness. It was vast, and deep, and as dark as a grave, and no one had ever gotten to the end of it. The villagers told stories of brave men who had sworn to make it to the end of the cave and back, and had disappeared forever. Boys in their early manhood had attempted many expeditions, only to emerge within the half-hour, their faces tight with fear and their eyes closed tightly in the sunlight. They told everyone that their torches had been extinguished within minutes, as if blown out by unseen mouths. Some of the old women in the village said that there was no end to the cave at all, that it went on forever, until there was nothing left inside—not rock, not air, not even darkness.
Kiara lived in the little cabin with her father, a blacksmith. He worked in a small forge behind their cabin, making candlesticks, axes, and horseshoes for the village. He had even made Kiara her very own sword. The sword gleamed so brightly in the sun that it could blind the birds passing in the sky.
Kiara had a mother once, too. Her mother had given Kiara her black eyes and black hair and her life, and not a thing else, because she’d died the moment Kiara was born. Kiara knew nothing about her. When she pestered her father for details, he set his jaw and turned away, his forehead wrinkling.
Kiara longed to know about her mother. One day she prepared a plate of her father’s favorite snack, pineapple. She cut it into perfect triangles and carried it out to her father’s workroom. She found him bent over the forge, holding an oblong piece of iron between tongs. His hair, gone gray early, clung to the sweat on the back of his neck.
“I’ve brought you some pineapple,” Kiara said.
He looked up from his work, glancing at her and then the plate. “Thank you, Ki-ki. That was very thoughtful of you. Set it down on the table, please. I’ll have some when I’m finished with this candlestick.”
Kiara set the plate down, then looked back at him. She shuffled her feet, then cleared her throat.
Her father looked up at her, his brow furrowing. “Was there something else, Ki-ki?”
Kiara took a breath. “I have a question, Father,” she began.
“Ask it!” said her father.
“What was my mother’s favorite color?”
The tendons in her father’s neck went rigid. He bent over his forge. Finally he said, “She didn’t have one.”
“Father!” said Kiara. “Everyone has a favorite color! Tell me.”
Her father didn’t look up. “Black,” he said.
“Black! That’s not a color.”
“It’s all of the colors,” he growled.
“Well then,” said Kiara, “What kind of black? Like a raven? Like ebony? Like coal?” “Kiara! Leave me be!” her father roared, his eyes dark and threatening. Kiara turned and ran back to the cabin, muttering, “Black is not a color.” In the kitchen she grabbed the pineapple rind off of the table and hurled it out the door to the chickens. She was desperate to learn more of her mother, but it wasn’t just that that bothered her. Why was her father so unhappy? She knew he loved her, but his grief was like a shadow through which she could not cross. She longed to make him happy, to see him full of joy and admiration for her.
That afternoon, as Kiara scattered corn for the chickens, she looked up at the waterfall and the Cave of Emptiness. “I bet I could explore the cave,” she thought. “I bet I could get all the way to the end of it. I’d find whatever’s there, and come back and tell everyone, and bring souvenirs—pebbles, and pieces of the cave wall, and things like that. And they’d all think I was so brave. And Father would be so impressed, and that might make him truly happy. Tomorrow is my ninth birthday. I’m old enough now to go out on my own.”
The next morning Kiara woke before dawn. She filled her father’s flask with water, and squeezed a wedge of pineapple through the opening. She didn’t bother with a torch, knowing they never lasted in the cave. Just in case she ran into trouble, however, she slipped her beloved sword into her belt. Then she set out for the great waterfall and the Cave of Emptiness.
And this is where our story truly begins, so join me, please, on the path to the cave. Imagine Kiara, small even for her age, with her braid swinging left and right with each step, marching towards the waterfall with determination. Her sword shines down her left leg to the knee. She grips the handle as she marches. Her flask bounces against her hip on the right side with a small sound that goes pit, pit, pit. She’s already thirsty, but she’s too intent on reaching her destination to pause. She reaches the cliff. She climbs up the side, where it’s dry, until she reaches a dirt path that’s been worn down by the feet of villagers who came to explore the cave, only to turn back. Kiara brushes the dirt off of her leggings, and looks up at the waterfall. The roar is stupendous, like sticking your head right in the mouth of a mad lion: ROOOARRR. The sunlight on the rushing water looks like a hundred dragons opening and closing their mouths, their green tongues snapping and their yellow eyes flashing. Kiara is just steps from the water now, and for a moment she considers running back home. She imagines throwing herself into her father’s arms, and curling up by the kitchen fire as he makes her a bowl of soup. But instead she takes a deep breath and steps behind the water, into the cave. When she looks back, there are no dragons in the water, no flashing yellow eyes. Just the rush of water as it dives from the cliff to the boulders in the lake below.
Kiara turns away from the waterfall. She is in the mouth of the cave. “Mouth of the cave,” she thinks, and now she understands that phrase: the cave’s opening is dank, and musty-smelling, like the unwashed mouth of a monster. She looks around. Where she stands everything is still lit from the sun weaving through the water. But when she looks into the depth of the cave, it is like looking into eternity. She can see nothing.
Kiara begins to walk towards the darkness. It isn’t long before she feels the blackness cover her like a heavy quilt. Instantly she feels the fear of all those who came before her. Their bodies are gone but their fear remains, bouncing against the cave walls like an echo. She whirls around and finds the opening of the cave: a distant circle of light, but it grounds her. She uncaps her flask and takes a long drink. The water is cold and crisp, with a hint of the pineapple’s brightness. She feels it run down her throat and into her stomach, and the sensation helps her feel the reality of her body, although she can barely see it. She hears a drip of water fall into a puddle, and the echo it makes: plop plop plop. She keeps her eyes on the circle of sunlight at the cave’s entrance.
Kiara’s heart is beating hard, and it says, “Kiara, you are brave and strong! Keep going! Do not lose faith!”
Kiara takes one more pull from her flask. She places her left hand on her hip and finds her sword, sturdy and real. She takes one last look at the dot of light behind her and then turns. She walks.
Kiara walks for a long time. She wants to look back, to see if she can see the cave’s opening, but she senses that if she does, she’ll run back as fast as she can. She keeps her face fixed ahead of her. The darkness goes from soft brown, to the color of the coffee beans her father grinds each morning in his pestle, and finally to a black purer than anything Kiara has ever known. It is not the black of ravens, which are flecked with purple, or of ebony, which is striped with brown, or of coal, which is spotted with silver. It is the black of the time before creation, of absence, of nothingness.
Kiara’s pupils are as large as the wheel rims her father makes in his forge. They search for light, for shape, for anything, but there is nothing. Now the sounds of her body are as loud as drums. She begins to breathe quickly, and her hands shake. She stops walking.
“Keep going!” says her heart.
But her head says, “Why do you care about the Cave of Emptiness, Kiara? Why do you always need to be the one to solve every riddle? Turn around, go back to your father, who is by now no doubt worried sick for you. For once, be what you are—a kid!”
Kiara breathes heavily, and her breath says, “Kiara, I’m afraid! Darkness is unnatural. Please, take us back to the light or we will die!”
Kiara turns around, towards the entrance. She begins to walk, slowly at first, and then faster. “Kiara!” shouts her brain. “Are you sure this is the right way? Are you sure you turned exactly 180 degrees? What if you turned down a side path, and will never find your way out?”
Kiara falls to her knees. She puts her hands on the ground, to feel where she is in space. She turns to her right and begins to crawl. “Kiara!” cries her breath. “Oh god, what are you doing? What if you were on the right path and this is a side path? You’ll be trapped here forever!” Kiara stops again. The cave is a huge black house with endless corridors. She pants, her head races, and her heart beats wildly.
“Heart,” she says, “you have never steered me wrong. Tell me, now, which way do I go?”
Kiara listens. Her heart beats, dumbly. Finally it says, “I do not know.”
Kiara has never felt so alone. She falls to her side and curls up into a ball, clutching her knees. “I am sorry Father,” she whispers. “I did not know how dark it would be.”
Kiara lays there for a long time, with her eyes closed. Finally, she hears a small voice. “Kiara?” asks her heart.
“Yes? What is it?”
“I have a small thought I would like to share. If you still want to hear from me, that is.”
“Of course I want to hear from you, heart. What is your thought?”
“Well, it occurs to me that if you lie here, you will surely die.”
“That’s true,” says Kiara.
“And if you get up and walk and never find your way out and are stuck here forever, you’ll die, too.”
“That’s true,” says Kiara.
“But if you get up and walk and find your way back to the village, you won’t die. You’ll go home, and eat supper, and live a long time. I hope, anyway.”
“That’s true as well,” says Kiara.
“What’s more,” says her heart, “if you get up and walk and find your way through the cave, and there is something astonishing on the other side, well then that would be excellent too. So if you stay here, you will die without a doubt. But if you get up and walk… we don’t know what will happen. It could be anything.”
“Hmm,” says Kiara. “I see your point.” Kiara gropes for her flask, unscrews the cap, and swallows her last long pull of pineapple water. She stands. She has no feel for where the entrance is. She looks around, but the darkness is absolute.
So she closes her eyes. And walks.
She walks a long time. She smells the metal of rocks, and the musk of wet dirt. She hears the drip of water, plop plop plop, and the scurry of small creatures, tu-kuh-tu-kuh-tu-kuh. And she walks.
Finally she hears something new. She hears the wind, and it seems to say, “Kiara…Kiara…” She walks faster. The sound grows louder. She opens her eyes and stops. Ahead of her is a small point of light. It is like a single star in the night sky. She begins to run. Her heart says, “Run, Kiara!” and her breath says, “Run, run!” and her head says, “Quickly, Kiara! As fast as you can!”
The point of light grows bigger and bigger until Kiara can see everything around her: glistening rocks, and tiny lizards, and puddles that reflect the dancing light. And then she is face to face with the opening of the cave, and the waterfall is crashing down from the cliff above, and the light is moving with the water like a mother and child who hold hands as they run. Kiara runs to the side of the opening and onto the path. She feels a few cool drops from the waterfall as she steps out, and then she is on the dirt path, and out of the cave that she is sure she will never, ever enter again.
Kiara stops. Where her village should be she sees a grassy meadow. She sees only tall grass, with small yellow flowers swaying in the wind, and beyond the grass, woods. Kiara feels for her sword and grips the handle tight. Now she spies, at the edge of the meadow, close to the forest, a small cabin, just like her own. In front of the cabin, in a bright blue dress, stands a woman with a long black braid over her shoulder. Kiara stares at her. The woman raises one arm. She waves.
Kiara’s heart says, “Go, Kiara.” And so Kiara walks, slowly at first, and then faster and faster, until she has crossed the meadow and reached the woman in front of the cabin. And then her mother’s arms are around her, and Kiara is weeping, and her mother is whispering, “Don’t cry, it’s alright, don’t cry,” and Kiara knows that somehow this is an invitation to cry as much as she wants, as much as she has ever wanted since the day she was born, motherless, into the world. Her mother runs her fingers over Kiara’s face, feeling the large eyes, the round cheeks, the high forehead, the small mouth. Kiara looks up to see the same small mouth, the same forehead, the same eyes as dark as a cave. She nestles her head into her mother’s neck and listens to the heart that beats there, and it sings, “Love, love, love, love, love.”
Kiara will go back. She will turn away from her mother, and cross the meadow to where the waterfall has reappeared. She will look back once to see the small yellow flowers waving goodbye, goodbye. She will enter the cave, and find her way in the darkness without fear. She will go back to her father, who is worried sick, and grow up, and have adventures, and even daughters of her own. But for now, we will let her stay in her mother’s arms, her eyes closed as the tears fall, as her mother whispers, “You found me, dear one, you found me.” Let us go, now, and give them their moment.
Image: Caverne Milodon de Chili by Remi Jouan (2006), from Wikimedia Commons
During my time working in the West of England I was handed the most curious of referrals. A 40-year-old man by the name of Darren had, to all intent and purpose, gone missing. A brief look through the records showed that this was in fact, not quite the case.
Darren had a physical disability, cerebral palsy, but was neurotypical. In the absence of any family in the town, he spent his weekends in Dowlais visiting his elderly aunt and uncle. On one such visit, Enid’s husband Dai had died suddenly of a heart attack. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon, the roast beef eaten, cleared away and washed up. Dai sat, with his newspaper and pipe, fell asleep and never woke up again. He was 85. Darren, who relied on Dai for lifts to and from his home some 40 miles away, had just never gone home. Fourteen months had now lapsed, during which Darren had had no formal package of care, no GP appointments, in fact very little to evidence that he even existed anymore.
Dowlais was a small village in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. It had traditionally been a community that provided workers for the steel and iron works, but, like many south Wales communities, the industries had fallen foul of poor economic conditions, imports and generally being held in little esteem by central government. Over the following years the population had gradually moved away leaving around 6,000 souls. Such factors did nothing to tell me the true stories of this community.
I called the phone number I had been given for Enid. She answered the phone in age old tradition ‘Good morning, Dowlais 355492’. Her voice, aged though it was, spoke with the lilting South Wales accent that poetry and song was written for. I introduced myself, saying I was a social worker and was just checking in to see how Darren was doing.
“Oh, he’s fine, we get by you know”, she replied.
“May I speak with him?” I asked.
“Well not really, he’s ever so crippled he is and doesn’t do so well with the phone, and any way, still grieving we are, since Dai died”.
It didn’t seem right to me that somebody would grieve for fourteen months, but if my experience had taught me one thing, it’s that grief doesn’t have rules or boundaries. It most certainly doesn’t adhere to timelines. After some conversational toing and froing, Enid agreed to let me visit Darren with a resigned, but ever so warm “well you’re very welcome to visit us, but we’re managing fine and we really don’t need anything”. I made an appointment for the following week and thanked Enid for her time.
The day came, I left in the early morning and headed off towards Dowlais. The drive was uneventful but the scenery breath-taking. New dual carriageways careered through valleys, hills and mountains. After life in the West of England, the absence of very many people was noticeable. My satnav brought me into Dowlais. Rows of terraced dark grey, light grey, cream and light blue houses stretched out down the road to the bottom of the village. Above the houses, the hills and mountains were lit up with unseasonal sunshine. The February wind whistled through the streets creating a bitter breeze. Every house had neat blue and black boxes of tin cans and plastic bottles awaiting collection.
I found Enid’s address and parked my car. Every house seemed to have lacy net curtains providing a wave of twitches as I walked to her house. I rang the doorbell. I could make out a short image walking slowly towards the door through the frosted glass. The door opened and there was Enid, an immaculately dressed lady in her 80’s in a floral dress and cardigan. Her grey hair was tightly pulled back, and she wore little wire glasses that circled her eyes.
“Bore Da” I said with a pronounced English accent “I’m Andy, we spoke on the phone”.
“It’s pronounced Borrer Da,” Enid said with a smile, “but that was a lovely attempt, thank you”.
Enid’s house exuded warmth and comfort.
“Go on through” she pointed to the lounge, as I walked through the hallway, I glanced right into what Enid called the ‘Sunday Room’; it was an immaculately kept dining room with thick patterned carpet, framed photos of family on the wall, a dining table, six chairs and an imposing wooden bookcase, the top part of which was a glass display cabinet holding trinkets and war medals from the Second World War. There was not a speck of dust in sight. I continued my short walk to the living room. An electric fire glowed in front of a tiled fireplace, modestly papered walls, family pictures, horseshoes, a few display teapots, many ornaments that were in practice love letters to Wales, and a fading tapestry in a glass frame that said:
“Life is going to work
To dig a hole,
To earn the money,
To buy the food,
To get the strength,
To go to work,
To dig a hole”.
I’m guessing there is some monotony suggested here, perhaps pathos, but all I saw was charm. As traditional as this home was, there was no anachronism. Welsh pride exuded through every pore of this community.
Enid invited me to sit down. The wooden legged furniture with soft arms and white lace protectors lying over the top provided perfect comfort. Darren sat in the corner. He was dressed smartly in plain trousers, a collared shirt and red v necked jumper.
“He wanted to make an effort because we had a guest” said Enid proudly. Darren sat, his arms and legs jerked slightly as he said “hello” and “thank you for coming.” His speech was slurred and a little slow, but patience proved the virtue and provided all that was needed to understand Darren. I asked how they were coping.
“Oh, we do fine” replied Enid warmly.
“We do fine thank you,” Darren said, echoing the sentiment. During the visit, four separate neighbours telephoned to ensure Enid and Darren were okay.
“The neighbours help whenever we need them to, that’s how we are here. We’re like a big family, see? Everyone looks out for everyone else.”
Enid quickly started talking about the Six Nations Rugby match against England the coming weekend.
“We’re ever so excited” she beamed
“We loves the rugby; the boys are definitely going to win it this year.” I pictured a Saturday in Dowlais, the pubs and houses all united in community behind the Welsh rugby team as this whole street was united behind Enid and Darren.
My concerns, however, were correct, Enid explained to me over an immaculately presented pot of tea, complete with matching cup of saucer and vast array of biscuits, that there was no package of care, no occupational health, no physio, no regular care at all. Enid, in her 80’s and standing at a fraction above five feet tall was washing, showering, changing, helping to the toilet and doing bedtime routines for Darren all on her own. Occasionally it got too much and she’d maybe ring Bette and Dai next door (there were men called Dai in no less than 5 of the surrounding houses so surnames were used in all communications to avoid confusion). All of the neighbours were happy to help. It occurred to me that while the government had neglected this resilient and proud corner of Wales (they had been left with little investment, few opportunities for the younger population, and very little agency of their own), one thing they did have was a sense of belonging, community and unity that most parts of the country had lost in pursuit of status, wealth and careers. Generations of families united to help each other out and support each other when nobody else would. They were inspiring people, but an absolute nightmare for a social worker. I asked to hear more from Enid about their family history.
“Well, my Dai’s been gone some 14 months this week” she said matter of factly. “Steel worker his whole life he was. But truth be told, a lot of him never came back from Aberfan”.
The mention of the word ‘Aberfan’ was followed by a deserving silence. On 21st October 1966, about 6 miles away, 144 people, mostly children at Pantglass Junior School, died when a colliery spoil tip collapsed. The resulting avalanche destroyed the local school and a number of houses. The community had never recovered and didn’t expect to. Everyone in the village, and most people in the surrounding communities had a family member or friend killed. The surviving children talked of guilt when they played, worked or even smiled. No disaster has ruptured and broken a British community like it since.
Enid talked of how, when word came through of the disaster in Aberfan, every Iron worker, steel worker, coal miner, farmer and labourer, downed tools and went to help with the search and rescue effort. Enid knew Dai had gone, he was gone for days, sleeping on a church floor, fed by the surviving tortured and bereft community, and digging in his waking hours.
“He never talked about what he saw or what he found” Enid talked in hushed tones.
“But he was never quite the same after that. But we never had children. He didn’t want them after that. I’m not sure if he’d feel guilty for having children when others had lost theirs, or if he just couldn’t stand the idea of putting himself through the pain that he’d seen others go through that day. But that was his decision. But it turned out well, when Darren was born we were as good as mam and dad for him anyway”. Darren smiled a huge grin when Enid said this, but a tear was visibly streaming down his face.
The victims of Aberfan weren’t just those that died. They were people like Dai, forever traumatised, riddled with unnecessary and disenfranchised guilt. This community would never forget and would never want to. The overwhelming sense of heartbreak, loss and trauma lived on and showed little signs of ever going away.
We talked a little more, with Enid and Darren both making perfectly clear that no help was needed, be it practical or financial. The community would step up so no formal intervention was needed. This community had been let down enough, and now it united to help those who needed it without fuss or complaint. It was a breath-taking prospect.
I thanked Enid and Darren for their time and hospitality and finally managed to get them to take a business card from me, promising that if it ever got too much, or they couldn’t cope any more, that they would give me a call. Enid promised, and shook my hand thanking me sincerely as she led me out into the bitter wind that howled through the valleys. I knew I would never hear from them, and, as frustrated as I was as a social worker, I was inspired by the dogged and industrial determination that held this community together. They were proud, hardworking folk, from a community that embraced and lived its traditions, in this case, pulling together and needing nobody else.
That weekend Wales lost their match to England 16-21 in Cardiff. I very much doubt Enid and Darren let it spoil their day, they really weren’t at home to self-pity.
Painting: Dowlais, 1840 by George Childs (Wikipedia)
The faint smell of death, that she hadn’t been able to scrub out, lingered in the large estate that Magda, after inheriting it from her sister, had converted from a funeral home into a bed and breakfast. Magda’s sister, Anika, a slight woman with jet black hair and soft blue eyes that retained a youthful sparkle as she grew older had married the undertaker from a tiny island off the Isle of Skye upon her first visit to Scotland.
Anika, who was three years younger than Magda, was killed in an automobile accident on the road to Edinburgh where she and her husband, Peter, were going to celebrate their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. A camper driven by a tourist who fell asleep at the wheel ran them off the road, and into the murky depths of Loch Garry.
Magda and Anika, who were orphaned at a young age, had looked out for one another until Anika married and moved to Scotland. Even then, Magda benefitted from their deep connection, remaining in close contact with Anika through the exchange of long, expressive letters until Anika’s unexpected demise.
Ever since they were little girls, Magda and Anika had longed to see Scotland, their mother’s country of origin. They were finally able to do so when, upon Anika’s twenty-first birthday, the orphanage released the pittance of an inheritance left for them by their father’s meager estate. They had been holding on to it since the girls were placed into the orphanage when their father committed suicide a year after their mother died giving birth to Anika.
The moment they got the money, Magda and Anika lit off to see their mother’s homeland. Upon their arrival, Anika joined a tour out of Glasgow to the Isle of Skye, while Magda, who was not feeling well, went on to their hotel, which was in Edinburgh.
Anika met her husband, Peter, after the tour bus driver and guide died right in the middle of a long-winded explanation of the geological significance of Kilt Rock. The tour was delayed while the company looked for a replacement. While she was waiting, Anika ended up attending the funeral of the tour guide, who happened to be a native of the tiny adjacent Storr island which was where she met her future husband.
It was a stomach virus, which she must have contracted on the flight from Bucharest, that prevented Magda from joining her sister on the Isle of Skye tour. A few days later, she got word that Anika would be delayed coming back, so, feeling better, she decided to go out and see Edinburgh. She was having an extremely nice time exploring the city and its ancient treasures before her sister sent message to Magda asking that she come immediately to the Isle of Skye to attend Anika’s wedding.
“How can I get married without my Maid of Honour?” Anika said in her letter. “Please hurry!”
“My but those highlanders work fast!” Magda thought as she quickly packed and rushed off to attend her sister’s wedding.
Magda, unlike her sister, had always seemed mature beyond her years. Tall, and stately as a tree, Magda had a quiet, thoughtful way about her that contrasted with Anika’s fun-loving personality. She had, also, a quiet, graceful beauty that she hid under plain, simple clothes, and a demeanour that fit her determined, hard-working nature.
Following Anika’s wedding, Magda went back to the orphanage looking for work, which she found when they hired her on as a cleaning woman. Twenty years later, Magda had worked her way up to assistant to the assistant director. It didn’t pay very well, but Magda was incredibly good at saving money. So, when, some fifteen years after reaching what would be the pinnacle of her career at the orphanage, she returned to Scotland, her purse held a modest sum. She had paid the price, though, of loneliness, for, in all those years, she never met anyone with whom she might share her humble earnings.
After attending her sister’s funeral on the Isle of Storr, Magda returned to Skye where, captivated by its beauty as well as its foggy, rain-prone climate, which felt deeply familiar to her, she stayed until the reading of her sister’s will. Every day, she went out to the Quiraing, a place where the land seemed to flow like a storm-stirred sea in topsy-turvy waves of swelling grassy hills and giant, odd-angled rock formations. There was a rhythmic wildness to it that seemed so familiar to Magda, it was as if it had sprung from the unexplored wilderness of her heart.
Upon her arrival on Skye, she began to feel as if her world was no longer real, as if she had entered into a storybook reality, the likes of which her mother used to read to her when she was a child. Her favourite was called The Selkie and The Sea Captain, which told the story of a seal-like creature that climbed aboard the captain’s ship one night, transformed into a beautiful woman with whom the captain fell in love.
She was never able to find the story in any other volume of fairy tales. When, years later, she found the storybook in a collection of her mother’s things that the orphanage had been saving for her and Amika, all the pages had faded away, the words and pictures having completely disappeared. The wild landscape of Skye brought to mind the storybook description of the island where the selkie and the sea captain lived happily ever after.
“It’s just a story,” her mother once told her. “In real life, most selkies would one day return to the sea.”
This is mother’s land, Magda thought, remembering that the people at the orphanage had told her that her mother was from the Isle of Skye.
It was shortly after learning that she had inherited the funeral home on the little island next to her mother’s place of birth, that Magda decided to move to the Isle of Storr. Having little interest in death, she converted the funeral home into a bed and breakfast. It was not long thereafter that a local gossip spread the terrible rumour about her being a witch who had joined a coven on the Isle of Skye after moving there from some far off region of the world. The gossip said that she had not so much inherited the funeral home as stolen it after casting a deadly spell upon her sister and brother-n-law, Peter, the well-liked local funeral director.
It was hard, at first, getting the business off the ground. The witch rumour spread across the island where, unlike the inhabitance of the Isle of Skye who she found to be friendly and welcoming, the people came across to her as being cold, almost cruel in their indifference. When she went into Sgaile, the only town on the island, for the first time to stock up on groceries, people stopped what they were doing to gawk disdainfully at her. Walking back home, school children taunted her.
Skye witch, lie witch
She’s not an inn-keep, she’s a faker
who flash-fried the baker
And buried the undertaker
They threw apples stolen from a nearby orchard, even after she went into the house. Once one of the apples thrown broke a window. Feeling like an unwelcome stranger, she never reported it, and so the little brats kept it up.
Sly witch, Skye witch,
Careful not to cross her
Or she’ll cast you a nice little spell
And you’ll end up down a well
After a while, though, she leaned how to use the rumor to her advantage. When the renovations were complete, she opened up under the name of The Craft Inn, where, her online ads said, guests were guaranteed to have a bewitching good time.
Nevertheless, the cruel taunting of the island children, caused, with their incessant chanting, her first guests, a timid older couple from London, to check out early.
Skye witch, don’t snitch
Or she’ll bury you in a ditch
While she laughs to bust a stitch
She’s like a scratch that you can’t itch
One night, after the awful children went home to bed, Magda, decided to go out for a walk, to explore the glen behind her property, and so take her mind off of them. She strolled down through the green and orange grasses to the rocky cliffs beside the sea. There, on a jagged rock jutting up from the blue-green sea-swirl, she saw a large, leather bound book just sitting there. It was as if it had grown, like some kind of peculiar moss or lichen, directly out of the rock formation.
Or, she fancied as she gazed upon the unusual object placement, like a book of verse misplaced by a sleepy selkie who’d been having a bit of a read before diving into deep green dreams. After wading into the water and retrieving the volume, which, somehow, was not in the least bit soggy, she began to imagine that it was, perhaps, not just read, but written by a mermaid or some other highly intelligent sea creature.
She walked home quickly, and, after drying off, threw a log on the fire, and poured a dram of Tobermory 21, one of a few very good Highland single malts that came along with the place, which she felt quite guilty to think of as a cherry on top of her bittersweet inheritance. Snuggling into an overstuffed chair by the fire, she opened the thick volume, and felt herself being immediately pulled, as if by a strong undertow, into its waves of deep, beautiful language. She’d never read anything like it before. There was no title, or author listed, and the entire thing was handwritten in long, flowing sentences that seemed to Magda to stream like deep sea currents.
She stopped, and took a sip of her scotch, mulling a devilish thought that just then entered her mind-maybe the book was a collection of magic spells.
“Might just be that I will become the witch that they accuse me of being!” she told herself. “Not a Skye Witch, perhaps, but a Sea Witch. Then I’ll cast a spell upon the whole lot of them!”
As she settled in to read the mysterious volume, though, she learned that it was not a book of spells as she’d hoped, but a collection of ancient myths, mostly about the highlands. It began with the description of a low rumbling in the earth that, it said, was once one thing with no division between land, sea and sky. One day, the rumbling turned into a tumbling quake that led it to shake loose from itself into mountains, streams, oceans and skies.
There was occasional reference to the various highland clans but the book’s protagonists seemed to be rocks, trees and heather-strewn hillsides; birds, sheep, Highland Coos and deer. There were magical beings, mostly fairies, kelpies, selkies and witches who roamed the highlands, interacting with the heroic flowers, stones and leaves. The clan members crossed paths, on occasion, with the main rabbit characters, protagonist periwinkles, heroic heather.
There were stories about sticks banding together to form trees, fish swimming circles around sea serpents, clouds gathering on the highlands to create rainstorms flooding green valleys between peaks of distant mountains. Magical beings arose to intervene when people threatened the environment like the story about the witch who poisoned apples when children broke their limbs in climbing them to pick their fruit. The story was told from the green apple perspective.
It described the feeling of the sun shining warm on their hard green bodies. The sensation of a gentle breeze moving around them, ruffling the leaves, and whistling through the wild woods. It spoke of the anguish of being infiltrated by worms or pecked by a bird. For the most part, though, it described the peaceful existence of apples, and their low level consciousness, aware of being apples hanging from trees but not much more.
Still, thought Magda, it was beautiful. There didn’t need to be much more. Just to be should be enough. What could be lovelier than to just exist; to sense cool blue afternoons stretching into peaceful pink dusks that sunk down into dark, lovely nights? To live such a life, she mused, would be bliss.
Still, she was delighted to read about the witch poisoning the apples to take out the bad little disturbers of the peace!
As she read the bizarre tales, Magda remembered that when she first arrived in Scotland, she’d read a series of legends about the highland clans. There were occasional references in this volume to those stories but they seemed to be happening more in the background, just as the rocks, the trees and the glens, the mountains, the lochs and the streams were the background for the clan tales. While those tales were no doubt written by people who belonged to the clans, these seemed to have been scribed by nature itself.
But people are a part of nature, she thought. After all, where do we go after we die? Priests say our souls go elsewhere, but our bodies go back into the earth. We never stop being a part of it. So if the book was written by nature, it was written by people too. The earth’s story is our story as well.
That night, after reading the strange book for several hours, she went to bed and dreamt of being a stone, a bird, and a green apple all at the same time. When she woke, she felt somehow changed. It was as if in reading it, the book was imparting its power upon her. So she left it on the little table by her chair, and read more of it each night.
It was during the stay of her second guest, a tall, silver-haired older gentleman with kind, intelligent eyes that were almost the same colour as his hair, that she learned how the ancient tales held a power much greater than any witch’s incantation.
The story of the witch who killed children with poisoned apples came to mind one day, while shopping at the general store in town, when she recognized one of the children who taunted her looking all kinds of well-behaved with his mother.
“Can I have an apple?” the bright-eyed little brat asked, picking up a green orb from a large bin of apples.
“No,” said the imp’s birther, a crumpled up leaf looking woman of withered complexion and haggard demeanour. “You’ll ruin your sup.”
“I’ll save it for laters,” the brat begged.
“Put it back, Brian,” his mother replied.
“May I?” Magda, opening her purse with a sudden inspiration asked.
“We’re not wanting charity,” Brian’s mother replied.
“Oh, its not charity,” Magda insisted. “We’re neighbours. I’m sure you’ll return the favours one day.
“Well, all right for the once,” the crumpled strumpet relented.
“There you are,” said Magda, with a toothy smile, like a shark happy with its prey. “Now is that the apple of your eye, little one?”
“Yes,” the mini monster replied, picking up the apple of interest from the bin.
“Looks like a good one,” said Magda, nodding to Mr. MacDonald, the store keep as she thought about the real power of myth.
It’s in how much the story told can be related to things happening in the lives of those to whom it is being told.
“You have to be careful choosing, though,” she went on. “You never know which ones the witch might have poisoned.”
“Witch?” the lad repeated the word he’d used in reference to the woman who just bought him an apple.
“Sure,” said Magda, “She lives in the glen behind my place. Once she stopped by to borrow a cup of sugar. She said it was for her children. Have children do you? I asked the gnarly wench. Oh, they’re not my children, she said. They’re my supper. They taste much better when sweetened slightly. That’s when she told me that she poisoned every third apple on every fourth apple tree on the island so that she could catch the kids she cooked. But don’t worry.
“The one you chose is not likely to be the third apple from the fourth tree. Anyway, its nothing to get your knickers twisted over. Poison apples are just a metaphor. Metaphors are used in stories and we all know that stories aren’t real so they can’t hurt you. Not unless it is told well enough, that is. If it is told well enough, a story becomes true. Reality is slowly changing as more and more tales are told into truth. You know how that is, I’m sure. After all, you tell a lot of stories, don’t you?”
“Stop talking to that child!” the crumbled leaf lady growled. “The spell is cast,” Magda replied mysteriously, bowing deeply before turning away to finish her shopping.
Later that night, little Brian got a bad stomach ache. When he was feeling better, he told his mates that the Skye Witch had poisoned him. After that, they never bothered Magda again.
It occurred to Magda, in the wake of this small victory, that by observing people and choosing specific stories to tell them, she could influence what happened in their lives. The telling of the tale would cast a spell upon them. It would influence what they said, did and thought.
She got the opportunity to test her theory when, as the rumour of the Skye Witch spread, she started getting visits from islanders with issues they thought she might help them resolve with a spell.
There was a young man who was in love but too shy to approach the girl of his dreams. So she told him the tale of a magic glen which grew courage in the form of wildflowers and tall grass She then gave him a strand of heather picked from the meadow behind her house, telling him to place it over his heart as he slept that might. The next morning she said that he should ask his dream mate out. He did. The girl accepted his invitation, and eventually married the formerly shy man, as the reputation of the Skye Witch grew.
As she began making up spells for others using simple common sense and the power of suggestion, she again got the feeling that her life was not real but rather a story in a book.
“I have become the central character in the fairy tale story of the Skye Witch,” she thought.
One night when, after having one too many glasses of scotch, she swore that she saw, right before her bleary, bedazzled eyes, a word writing itself, letter by letter, onto a blank page that she turned to in the book. The word was Selkie.
Frightened, she closed the book and hurried to bed. When she opened the book up to the same page in the morning, the word was gone.
“I must have dreamt it,” she thought, imagining the strange volume she’d been reading had caused the odd dream to occur.
Curiosity getting the best of her, she went back to reading the unusual tales in the book. She started feeling a kind of powerful energy arising from them that was so intense, the telling of them could change the nature of reality itself.
She’d suspected right from the beginning that there was something about the ancient nature of the hand-written volume that gave it power. Maybe, she thought, it was because a book as old as this one was likely to have been read by many.
She imagined that each reader had a sightly different perspective, which would lead to different interpretations of the myths it told. While the words themselves would not change, the meaning behind them would grow and evolve with each reading. This book, she thought, is alive, and so full of as much possibility as any human life.
Magda wondered if this was true of all books, like the book of legends that she’d read upon her first trip to Scotland.
There was something familiar about the old man staying at the inn, she thought as she made breakfast the following morning, that reminded her of those early, enchanting days in Edinburgh.
On Lonnie’s first night in his room at the little B&B with the faint smell of death, he was awakened by the sound of a child crying. Between the death-smell and the sobbing youngster, he couldn’t get back to sleep. Instead, he laid awake the rest of the night thinking about how fragile everything is. In his career as a social worker, he’d witnessed a great deal of pain and suffering. At times, he’d been able to help his clients, while at other times, he failed. Then there were those times when, faced with terminal illness, the goal was not to help his clients to live but to make it easier for them to die.
At times like this, he thought, the dead feel so close that you could reach out and touch them. But it can’t be done. The barrier between us and them is impenetrable.
He thought about the loved ones he’d lost to death, including his wife who died recently, his brother whom he’d lost just after the holidays, and his parents who passed, one after the other, a decade ago.
The next morning, when stepping out for air before breakfast, he saw sheep wandering through the glen behind the inn, and realized that it wasn’t a crying child that he’d heard, but a bleating sheep. He let out a sigh of relief, thinking that he must have let the pain of his recent loss influence his imagination.
It had been some thirty-five years since Lonnie Maclean last set foot in Scotland. When Lonnie’s wife, Cathy, who was also a social worker, died earlier that year, his mind plunged into an ocean of deep memory, his thoughts sifting through waves of past time. Amongst other things, he remembered his first trip abroad on his own after saving up from his summer job as a lifeguard at Lake Quinsigamund.
Inspired by stories told to him by his first generation Scottish grandparents, Lonnie, at the age of twenty-two, lit off for Edinburgh. He stayed in a hostel not far from Edinburgh Castle. He recalled, when first visiting the castle, glancing into the soft blue eyes of a tall, lovely woman. He remembered feeling that she seemed both exotic and familiar, like a tropical island that you’d read about but never visited. It was something that he had never experienced before, like the desire to return to a place that he’d never been.
He was fortunate enough to have bumped into her later that morning, at the Castle Gift Shop. She was rummaging through books on Scotland including one called “Legends of The Highlands” that contained stories of Scottish Highland Clans. Lonnie happened to be walking by on his way to buy a map, when she dropped the book, which landed at his feet. Bending to pick it up, he noticed that it was opened up to a page at the top of which was written “Chapter Nine: The MacLean Clan.”
“What a coincidence,” he said as he handed the book back to her.
“Thank you,” she replied, “but what coincidence is that?”
“The chapter is entitled The MacLean Clan,” he replied.
“Yes?” she said, perplexed.
“I’m a MacLean,” he replied.
“Oh, I see,” Magda said. “But you’re not Scottish, are you?”
“No,” said Lonnie. “American. But my grandfather was from the Isle of Mull.”
“Really?” she said. “I was just reading about Mull.” “I can imagine,” said Lonnie.
“How’s that?” she asked.
“Oh, the Macleans,” said Lonnie. “They’re from Mull and thereabouts.”
“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “You’re a Maclean.”
“Yes,” he replied. “Lonnie Maclean.”
“Magda Dragoes,” the young woman replied.
Magda, who’d just been reading about a romantic encounter in the book of legends that involved a MacLean and a woman from the Campbell Clan when Lonnie appeared, bought the book and took it with her when she went to have tea with Lonnie at a nearby café. They took turns reading tales from the book while they sipped an unusual blend of tea that Magda convinced Lonnie, a confirmed coffee drinker, to try.
They had such a nice time that they agreed to meet again the next day, to walk the Royal Mile together, down the hill from the castle to Holly Rood Palace at the bottom.
Lonnie never found out why the charming woman he’d met at the castle didn’t show for their date the next day. He couldn’t have known that when Magda returned to her hotel, she received a message from her sister explaining that after being unexpectedly delayed on the Isle of Skye, she no longer planned to come to Edinburgh at all.
He had no idea that, in her letter to her sister, Anika had asked Magda to come immediately to join her in the Hebrides. He didn’t know that Magda couldn’t afford to stay on in Edinburgh on her own or how much she regretted missing her appointment with him.
It was during this magical interlude in Edinburgh that Magda first had the feeling that her life was not real. She had always felt awkward, like being human did not come naturally to her. She’d often fancied that her true self was something deep inside of her that pre-dated her human incarnation. This was the first time, though, that she felt like her life was not a life but a story being told by someone or something outside of herself. Now that she was leaving, it seemed that the story was over.
Magda didn’t recognize Lonnie until his second night staying at the Craft Inn when she was reading a story in the book, which told about Edinburgh Castle from the point of view of the ancient rocks that were used to build it. There was a part in the story in which the rocks overheard the conversation of two young people who met in the castle gift shop. Their names were Lonnie and Magda. She suddenly remembered everything that had happened, while at the same time having the sensation that it had not happened until she read about it in the book. It was as if the story had created her memory as it rewrote her past.
In the next chapter, she read a story told by the sea about an island rising up out of the waves and the mist-the fabled Isle of Storr where the same background characters from the castle met once again. It was then that Magda realized that everything that had happened, and everything that was happening, was being told into being by the book. It occurred to her, then, that there was no Isle of Storr until the book told it into existence.
That was why when her sister first wrote to her about it, she was never able to find it on a map of the region. There was a Storr Hill on Skye with the famous Old Man of Storr rock formation. As she thought about it now, Magda had a flashing fancy of the rock formation coming to life in the form of the old man currently staying in the inn.
Nature, she thought, is reinventing itself in an ever-unfolding tale.
It was in that moment that she came to understand that what she was reading was a living document. The book itself was conscious and aware of Magda’s reading it. It shifted the shape of its narrative to include her, changing her personal history to fit into its tale of the castle.
She wondered if the old man staying at the inn, who she now recognized as Lonnie, the character from the story that the book was telling, was aware of the newly formed past that connected them. She determined that she would find out at breakfast.
The scent of the tea brewing the next morning, brought Lonnie back to a time that he had completely forgotten about. He’d craved his usual coffee when he awoke that morning, but there was something about the kindness in the voice of the woman who ran the place when she offered him tea that made him accept.
He’d just been dreaming about visiting the Isle of Mull to see Duarte, the Maclean castle, and remembering how great it was to walk through the majestic ancient structure, which gave him the sense of being a part of something greater than himself, when the aromatic fragrance of the unusual blend of tea reached his nostrils. It was then that the memory of that one lovely afternoon in Edinburgh came whirling back to him.
Magda had run out of her usual English Breakfast Tea and was using a special blend made in Edinburgh. She too recognized the unusual wild rose and sea salt fragrance of the tea as it brewed.
“Sorry, I ran out of my usual tea,” she said as she brought the tray with sliver pot and delicate, porcelain tea cups into the dining room where Lonnie sat by the window looking out across the grassy glen stretching down to the sea.
“Why didn’t you come back?” Lonnie found himself suddenly asking.
“Come back where?” Magda asked, although she was fairly certain that she knew what he was talking about.
“Edinburgh,” he replied. “The castle. We shared a moment that was sweet thee, didn’t we? We went to tea, and made plans to meet up at the castle the next morning. We were going to go together down the hill, to walk the Royal Mile to Holly Rood. Don’t you remember? You said you would come back. Why didn’t you?”
“Because I was never there,” Magda replied mysteriously.
“What do you mean you were never there?” said Lonnie. “It was you. I know it was.”
“Yes, it was me,” Magda admitted. “but the memory in which we met never happened.”
“You mean all we have is this moment, so don’t blow it?” Lonnie, interpreting Magda’s cryptic words as a strange joke, said sardonically.
“Exactly,” said Magda, thankful that Lonnie was not immediately scared off by the crazy words that she found herself saying.
“Pretty funny,” Lonnie said with a slightly sheepish smile, “but to be perfectly honest, I’ve got to tell you-what you’re saying doesn’t make a lick of sense!”
“I know,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense. Nothing that has happened since I found the book makes any sense.”
“What book?” asked Lonnie.
“The book I found,” she said. “It was just sitting there on a rock jutting up from the sea. When I started to read it, I understood that it was not written by any human hand.”
“No?” said Lonnie. “Who wrote it then?”
“It was written by the sea,” Magda replied without a note of sarcasm.
“What!” Lonnie exclaimed. “Come on!”
“The sea,” Magda repeated in the same serious tone, “and the stones lying on the beach. By the grasses and the heather growing on the sides of mountains. By the deer in the forest and by the forest. By the birds, the insects, the squirrels, and the trees.”
“Do you really believe this?” asked Lonnie.
“No,” Magda replied. “not really. It wasn’t written by any one of them any more than it was written by you or me. Not alone anyway. It was written by those things that we’ve never been able to tame in ourselves and in the world – the wild things.”
“Are you feeling all right?” Lonnie asked with genuine concern.
“I’m fine,” she replied. “The book really does exist. Come, I’ll show you.”
She led Lonnie into the drawing room to the chair by the fire, and pointed to the little table, but the book was not there. At first she was baffled, but a strange notion soon took hold of her. The book, she thought, had written itself back into the sea.
“Come,” she said to Lonnie, taking him by the hand and leading him out the back door, and down through the raspberry brambles to the sea where she saw the book sitting on the same craggy rock. Without thinking, she waded out into the choppy water.
“What are you doing?” the confused Lonnie asked as he watched Magda walk into the rough water.
“You’ll see,” Magda cried just before a big wave crashed over her.
She made it to the rock where she saw the book had blown open in the rising gale, to a page near the end of the volume where she read these words:
“Nature writes the book, the book writes the reader, and I wrote you. Your nature is my nature for I am your mother, and I have always been with you as I knew that I would be when I wrote you long before I left the sea. I was there with you in the eyes of your father and in the tears that he cried when I died. I was there with you and your sister in the orphanage when you were in such pain. I was there in the walls and the floors and the rooftop. I was there in the grass that grows on the grounds and in the trees of the forest that surrounds. I was in the stones of Edinburgh Castle, watching as you explored. Where ever you went, I went with you. To be with you, I was forced to leave the sea, but the sea never left me. And so you, who are of me, are also of the sea. My mind is your mind. My flesh is your flesh. Look under the bookand you will see.”
Underneath the book, Magda found a sheath of shiny dark green seal skin.
“It can’t be,” astonished, Magda whispered, as she remembered seeing something shiny in the water on the ferry ride over from Skye. It seemed to be following the small vessel.
“I have always been with you,” she whispered the words that her mother said according to what she’d just read in the enchanted book.
“When I left the sea to marry your father, I left my skin here for you,” the book read. “I knew one day you would find it. This is your legacy. Now you have a decision to make. Put on the skin of your mother, and return to your true home in the sea…”
“Or?” Magda asked, as she turned to the last page to see what choice would be offered by her mother, who must have written these words, and perhaps the whole book, many years before she was born.
“Or you can write your own story,”were the only words written on the last page.
Magda, feeling like she finally understood what the magical volume was trying to tell her, looked back at Lonnie and smiled. She then let go of her mother’s shiny selkie skin and, leaving the book where it was, slowly waded ashore.
The insights of a social worker should prove most helpful in tailoring spells to meet the needs of islanders, she thought, as she took Lonnie’s hand, and walked back to the inn. There Magda continued the story of the Skye Witch, written with love in the language of the living.
END
photo: Vincent van Zeijst (2018) on Wikimedia Commons
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JONAH magazine 