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InterText Vol. 7, No. 2 / March-April 1997
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Contents
The Mirror of Aelitz...................Ellen Terris Brenner
Understanding Green............................David Appell
Way of the Wolf...............................S. Kay Elmore
Small Miracles are Better Than None..........Peter Meyerson
....................................................................
Editor Assistant Editor
Jason Snell Geoff Duncan
jsnell@intertext.com geoff@intertext.com
....................................................................
Assistant Editor Send correspondence to
Susan Grossman editors@intertext.com
susan@intertext.com or intertext@intertext.com
....................................................................
Submissions Panelists:
Bob Bush, Brian Byrne, Rod Johnston, Peter Jones,
Morten Lauritsen, Jason Snell
....................................................................
InterText Vol. 7, No. 2. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this
magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold
(either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire
text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1997, Jason Snell.
Individual stories Copyright 1997 their original authors. For
more information about InterText, send a message to
info@intertext.com. For writers' guidelines, mail
guidelines@intertext.com.
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The Mirror of Aelitz by Ellen Terris Brenner
================================================
....................................................................
Is true wisdom a knowledge of the outside world, or of the world
within one's self?
....................................................................
The tale comes to us from the Younger Days of a small but
prosperous kingdom, nestled in a valley of the Cloud Mountains,
and bearing the name Aelitz. Its people were strong, and its
rulers wise; but the true source of Aelitz's prosperity (so all
the countries around them believed) was a magical mirror of
great antiquity.
Many tales coalesced around this mirror. It was said that it had
fallen like a star from the skies in the Dawn Days, when the
Earth was new; when the First Woman found it, she was so moved
by what she saw in it that the tears she shed became all the
lakes and rivers and seas of the world. It was also told that
when the Second Woman stole the mirror for her own, what she
then saw therein caused her to tear open her throat with her own
hands, birthing all the animals of the air and the earth from
her blood.
And many other such tales were told about this mirror, some of
which held more truth than their tellers realized. But only the
monks, who kept the mirror safe in their abbey overlooking
Aelitz, were allowed to look in it. And whenever they were asked
about the mirror, they only smiled.
King Jeil of the neighboring country of Rigad envied the success
of Aelitz. His people were diligent, and he considered himself
an accomplished warrior and ruler, but his country remained poor
and struggling. So Jeil swore to get the secret of the mirror of
Aelitz for himself, one way or another.
He dressed in pilgrim's garb, put plain harness on his best
traveling steed, and rode with a small retinue to the monastery
of Aelitz. There he beat on the great oaken door with the stone
club he found standing by the doorpost, and waited impatiently.
The monk who opened the door looked at him with ancient eyes
that were not in the least surprised to see him. "All hail, King
Jeil of Rigad," she greeted him, "and blessings on the land over
which you rule."
"All hail, Your Holiness," replied Jeil, annoyed that the monk
had recognized him. "I have come to learn wisdom of the mirror
in your possession."
"Nobody possesses the mirror," said the monk, smiling. "We are
merely its guardians. And as such, I fear we must turn down your
request."
"I am willing to undergo the proper initiation," stammered the
king, unused to being refused anything.
"It would be no use for you to do that," said the monk, "for
your intention is wrong."
"My intention is to improve the lot of my people," said Jeil,
growing angry.
The monk smiled again, not unkindly. "The instrument with which
you beat on our door is not meant as a door-knocker, but is a
pestle with which we grind spices for our ritual incense." And
Jeil looked, and was mortified to see brown resins clinging to
the stone pestle, and smeared on the door where he had struck
it.
"Why do you wish to look into ancient mysteries," asked the
monk, "when you have yet to learn to look at the world around
you?"
"How can I hope to learn if you will not teach me?" shouted King
Jeil, but the monk had already closed the door.
Enraged, the king took his retinue away from that place and hid
them in the wild woods of the mountainside. At midnight he rode
back to the monastery, his horse's hooves and harness muffled in
strips of cloth. Nobody stirred to stop him as he scaled the
monastery walls, crept amongst the sleeping huts, and slipped
inside the chapel. There in an alcove hung the mirror, a mere
two hands' breadth wide, covered by a dense dark cloth. For a
second he hesitated, surprised to find himself questioning his
resolve. Then he shook off his doubt, seized the mirror and
thrust it in his satchel. He was away and over the wall and
spurring his horse before he could think one more thought about
his deed.
His retinue joined him at their appointed rendezvous, and
together they thundered for the border, looking over their
shoulder all the while for signs of pursuit.
Meanwhile the monks, all of whom had been awake the whole time,
rose ten minutes after Jeil's trespass and rang the great bell
in the midst of their compound. The sound of it filled the
entire valley of Aelitz. Every mother's child of that kingdom,
from the smallest gooseherd to the aged King bolted out of bed,
crying "The mirror! The gods save the mirror!"
The King's champion, Fatila, also leapt out of bed. Cursing, she
ran to the stables with her long dark hair streaming unbound
behind her, clutching sword in one hand, boots in the other. The
yard teemed with still-awakening creatures -- soldiers,
stablehands, and horses -- all stomping and crying after their
kind, as the great bell continued to toll.
Fatila mounted her great war steed with a heavy heart. She had
won many glories in war and in sword duels, and defied death
many times. But for the past three moons she had been plagued
with dreams of disaster, and she wondered now if this was not
her death come at last. Her gloom only increased when a runner
came from the monastery saying it was Jeil of Rigad who had
brazenly stolen the treasure of Aelitz. She needed no mirror to
tell her that many lives would be lost before one such as Jeil
would admit defeat.
Fatila led the first pursuit party, with more horsetroops
following swiftly behind. All of them knew the narrow mountain
roads like the faces of their father and mother.
But so did Jeil and his band, and with their slim lead they
stayed ahead of their pursuit, arriving safely at the great
stone walls of their home city by dawn.
No sooner was Jeil's party within the city gate than the king
wheeled on his sweat-drenched mount and cried out: "Close and
bolt all the gates! Prepare for battle!" Soldiers stumbled out
of barracks to the sound of trumpets and drums, and lined the
walls with the implements of war. When Fatila crested the hill
overlooking the great main gate of Rigad, her heart sank within
her to see the walled city-state already primed for siege. There
was nothing more she could do but wait for the rest of her
troops to arrive, and prepare for a long bitter struggle.
Within the walls of Rigad, word quickly spread that their king
had successfully captured the pride of Aelitz. Every soul,
whether soldier or citizen, was alight with exultation. "The
mirror! Glory to the mirror!" was the cry from battlement and
square. Meanwhile, King Jeil had gone straight to his chambers
and locked himself in alone with the mirror.
Many times during his flight had he thought to doubt his
impetuous action. Aelitz, after all, was mighty in war and had a
great champion in Fatila, and his country, being poor, might
come to great harm in a siege. But then he would slide a hand
down to feel the prize in his satchel, and all his doubts would
scatter like the gravel under his horse's hooves. The mirror
would make all right. The mirror would show him what to do.
Now he hung the mirror on the wall of his chamber, paused a
moment to catch his breath, and then snatched away the relic's
protective cloth. He was startled to see how plain it was. Its
frame was unpainted wood, smoothed in the manner of driftwood
from the far oceans. The reflective surface seemed neither glass
nor metal but some other, darker substance he could not name.
Images swirled below that surface. The images drew him closer.
He looked in.
He saw the birth of this world, and the worlds that lived and
died before this one. He saw the nativities of the gods; he saw
the nests that hatched the stars. He saw First and Second Woman
arise from the mud in which the gods had sown them, to join in
their primal sororal struggles at the Dawn of our world. He saw
their blood and tears intermingle to give rise to all living
creatures, and their wombs (alive and dead) give birth to the
tribes of humanity and of the spirit world. He saw the human
generations rise, one after another, loving and fighting, mating
and killing, all unconscious of the consequences of their
actions. And he saw the gods walking among them, sometimes
recognized but more often completely unknown, and his heart
quailed within him to imagine what the Eternal Ones must think
of these sad, unmindful lives. And then it was as if the mirror
were an eye looking back into his eyes, into his own soul, and
he had no excuse to offer its implacable gaze.
When at last he looked away, he was surprised to see the morning
sun still shining into his chamber.
He walked to the window, feeling very much older, and with a
pang looked down on the hundreds of soldiers, his own and those
of Aelitz, which his folly had summoned here to kill each other.
War songs celebrating the mirror rose from his troops on the
clear morning air, full of the spirit of conquest. War songs of
righteous anger rose in response from the troops outside the
walls. And there, on the ridge overlooking the Great Gate, rode
a woman with long dark hair like a flag on the wind -- Fatila,
who never turned away.
He saw that there was no longer any way to capitulate without
sparking either a rout or a riot. There was only one way left at
this point, and he had brought it on himself.
Fatila was conferring with her generals over the reports from
their scouts when a shout drew her attention to the Great Gate.
The portals had opened a crack to let someone slip out: an
unarmed youth in green, the color of parley. He stepped forward
and handed a scroll to an Aelitzian captain, who came quickly
riding up the hill with it to Fatila. She felt her generals'
eyes bore into her as she read it, even as the words likewise
stabbed into her soul. Finally she spoke:
"Jeil proposes a fair fight. He and I. To the death. Winner to
take the mirror, loser's side to withdraw unharmed."
"It's a trick. He's learned arcane fighting skills from the
mirror," said one general.
"You cannot learn such things from the mirror," said another.
"How do you know?" snapped Fatila. "Do any of you know what the
mirror's powers are in the first place?" The generals fell
silent. She stared at them all, realizing that this question had
been boiling up in her for some hours now.
"Just so," she spoke more gently, so that her generals now
stared at her in turn. "None of us know. Strange, that our
homeland had held this object sacred for all these years, and
yet nobody has a blessed idea what it means. Even we, who lead
our people to die for it."
"Blasphemy--" muttered one general.
"Enough." Fatila's voice grew hard again. "As I said, we do not
know what Jeil could or could not have learned from the mirror.
There are only two things we do know for certain. One, that a
siege would be the ruin of both kingdoms. And two, that a duel
might be the salvation of at least one."
She spurred her horse, then, and left her generals gaping as she
rode down to the gate. The two armies on either side of their
wall sent up terrible battle shouts as heralds cried out the
terms of the fair fight.
When Jeil rode out from the gate, Fatila barely recognized him
-- he looked like a man who had awakened from a fever dream.
Without a word, he dismounted and strode to a nearby tree; over
a branch he slung a satchel that sagged with the weight it
carried. He stepped away, and waited.
Fatila gestured, and from amongst her soldiers emerged one of
the monks from the monastery. Calmly he approached the tree,
opened the satchel, and looked under the cloth shrouding the
object within. "It is the mirror," he announced in a clear
voice. His smile seemed to strike Jeil like a blow.
The armies grew silent as the two combatants faced each other,
swords drawn, bodies still. Something in Jeil's eyes made Fatila
catch her breath: this was a man who had seen premonitions of
his death, just as she had seen foreshadowings of her own.
Then with a whirl and clash of steel on steel, it was begun.
The armies found their voices again and made the mountains ring
with their cries. Back and forth on the grass the swordfighters
strode, matching each other move for move. It seemed they were
more perfectly matched than any two warriors had ever been.
Wherever one swung or thrust, the other's blade was there to
meet it, and neither was succeeding in getting so much as a nick
on the other's armor. The armies shouted again and again; never
had anyone seen its like, and each onlooker began to feel even a
grudging admiration for their enemy's champion, so wonderful was
the fighting.
But as the minutes wore on, and grew to an hour, and then two,
the cries of the onlookers faded again, replaced by mutterings
of dread. No normal warriors could carry on a fight this long,
and still move with such grace and ferocity.
Fatila heard the mutterings as if from very far away. In every
duel she had ever fought, she had reached a brief peak of
transport, in which she and her sword were one, singing through
the air, a perfect balance of forces striking home. In every
previous duel that peak had lasted at most a few minutes, more
often only seconds, before she and her blade found their
opponent's heart. Now the transport was continuing for
unimaginable lengths of time. In fact, she had lost track of
time. All she knew was the singing blades, his and hers, and his
eyes that had lost all fear of death, and her heart whose fear
had likewise vanished. She felt that she might take a blade in
her own breast this time and bless it for a worthy death.
But then, she felt herself transcending even this heightened
battle transport. As their blades continued to dance, she
thought she could hear the singing of gods and stars as they had
sung at the moment of their birth. As their feet trampled the
sward to dust, she felt them moving in the primal dance of love
and hate between First and Second Woman. As she looked deep into
her adversary's eyes she could see all the sorrow of the ages
for the forgetful generations of humanity. And his eyes looked
deep into her own also, and she could not hide her soul from
him.
Three full hours they fought, neither gaining the advantage, and
then at last they paused, facing each other. Their mortal
fatigue was finally overwhelming whatever power had borne the
both of them this long. At this point, the duel would no longer
be decided by the most skillful play of sword, but by the
blunderings of exhaustion.
Then, breaking into a frightening smile, Jeil planted his sword
point-first into the now-dusty ground, and knelt beside it in
concession.
As the Aelitzian army broke out in cheers and the Rigadians in
wails of grief, Fatila looked on the surrendering king with
sorrow such as she had never felt before.
"I cannot kill you," she said.
"But you must." He looked up at her, still smiling that terrible
smile, eyes flooded with tears. "I beg you."
"Forfeit his life to us."
They both turned, startled, to find themselves looking into the
serene countenance of the monk. He already wore the satchel over
his shoulder. "It was us he wronged," said the monk. "It is we
who should decide how best to dispose of him."
Fatila nodded, incapable of speech.
In short order Jeil was mounted on a horse with his wrists bound
to the pommel. Fatila watched as he rode away, led by the monk
and a detachment of soldiers back to the monastery. He looked
back at her once. And then he was gone.
There followed much conferring of emissaries and diplomats, and
many careful and tactful speeches, until eventually Rigad was
left in the charge of Jeil's younger sister and a regent. Both
armies withdrew without further incident, and so ended the war
-- but not our tale.
When the party accompanying Jeil arrived at the monastery, the
monk dismissed the soldiers and led Jeil in alone. He then
dismounted from his own horse, took a knife from his belt, and
cut the ropes that bound the vanquished king.
Jeil gaped at him. "What do you mean by this?"
"I am disposing of you. Your old life is hereby over and dead.
You are now a monk of this order."
"But I violated every aspect of your order."
"I will admit," smiled the monk, "that yours was not the usual
way of initiation into the use of the mirror. But then, as one
of us told you, we do not possess the mirror, we are only its
guardians. This is neither the first nor the last time that it
has chosen its own initiates, in its own way and time."
It was only a day later that the monastery received another
visitor: Fatila, also seeking initiation. She too was told she
had already been initiated by the mirror, having seen its
reflection in Jeil's eyes. Eventually Jeil and Fatila became the
abbot and abbess of the monastery, and the prosperity of both
their homelands became the stuff of legends.
But as to the mirror, it is now lost to us, as is so much of the
wisdom of the Younger Days.
Ellen Terris Brenner (brenner@wolfenet.com)
---------------------------------------------
Ellen Terris Brenner is (in no particular order of importance) a
writer, computer geek, les/bi/gay/trans community activist,
Unitarian minister, singer, Clarion West alumna, and newbie
air-cooled VW camper enthusiast. She lives in Seattle with an
obstreperous cat named Jimmy Dean, the Rebel Without a Clue. Her
home on the Web is <http://www.wolfenet.com/~brenner/>.
Understanding Green by David Appell
=======================================
...................................................................
"All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated
act without benefit of experience."
--Henry Miller
...................................................................
When I returned from lunch there were two messages on my desk.
One was from my mother, calling no doubt to tell me about her
latest adventure with my father. The other was from Joyce, my
older sister. Joyce calls me perhaps four times a year, as if to
give me a quarterly report on her life, but rarely when I am at
work. I called her back immediately to see if her balance sheet
had made it to the black.
As soon as I said hello she asked, "Did she call you yet?"
I knew she meant our mother. I pretended I didn't get my
mother's message. This was sneaky but not really a lie, since I
didn't actually speak to our mother when she called. Besides,
this way I thought I could find out a little about what was
going on.
"Well, we're invited to the house. For dinner. All three of us.
This Saturday. They have something to tell us." For an English
professor, she sometimes speaks in remarkably incomplete
sentences, especially since she doesn't have tenure. "In August.
Can you believe it? It's not even a holiday. Something's up."
Jumpy Joyce, we called her as teenagers. Always nervous, always
the first to conjure up suspicion.
"I for one wouldn't mind getting out of the city on a weekend
day in August. At least it will be green."
"Right," she said.
"Besides, she probably just wants to show us a giant zucchini in
her garden. Or maybe she converted the den to a hydroponic
farm."
"Right, Marc," she said somewhat coldly. I get a great deal of
pleasure out of showing my sister what it is like to be normally
weird. It is something she never got the hang of.
"Well, I think something's up. But you obviously couldn't care
less. I guess I'll see you there then," she said.
"Not if I see you first," I said as straight as I could. I heard
her sigh loudly before she got the handset back in its cradle.
When I arrive at my parents' house on Saturday afternoon Joyce
and Pam are sitting on the back deck above the swimming pool.
Joyce is drinking an iced tea and Pam has a glass of wine. The
reverse might make the day go a little smoother, I think. Our
little sister Pamela can get pretty wild.
"Where are they?" I ask.
"Upstairs," Pam says with a bored toss of her head. "I think we
might have caught them in the middle of something." Since when
did she find sex boring, even if it was between our parents?
I pull up a chair. We are each alone, two by choice. I'm
separated for nearly a year, after three years of marriage. We
are going through the legalities now. Pam is by herself today,
but she could have her choice of nearly any man, as beautiful as
she is. She usually sees three or four of them at once, and no
doubt they are all wondering where she is today and which of the
others she is with. I think she enjoys that. Only Joyce resents
the whole of mankind because someone had once fallen in and out
of love with her. Of course, it isn't that simple. She hadn't
liked it a lot before then -- mankind, that is -- but the
experience hastened her quest to find the worst in everything.
Now bitterness is turning her into a frump. It is not easy to
watch your sister turn into a frump, especially when she is in
her early thirties. She isn't unattractive, when she tries.
But she has stopped trying. Perhaps she doesn't even realize it.
I would like to tell her this, but I don't know how to begin.
I sit next to them and wait for our parents to come down. Joyce
is reading the _Times_, and Pam gets up to go into the house and
pour herself another glass of wine. "Need anything?" she says to
me.
"Yeah. Peace, happiness and eternal life."
She pauses for a few seconds, just the right amount. "Well, how
about a glass of white zin instead?"
"Okay."
She gives me a wink as she opens the sliding glass door.
Pam comes out and hands me the glass and sits next to me. "So
how's it doing?" she asks. I know she means my heart. After
Laurie left suddenly for another man, Pam helped me more than
anyone -- listening, supporting, encouraging. She worked gently
but steadfastly to cushion me, then to pull me up, to reassure
me, and to help me through the last wintry year. A deep hole
opened in my life when Laurie left, and the trees dropped their
leaves and stood leaning into the brisk wind, so the landscape
seemed barren -- scorched and defoliated. I am still adjusting
-- hurting, lonely, but working now to be content with myself
first. I can feel small green shoots beginning to break through
the black ground, thanks mainly to my younger sister. She is the
strongest person I know.
We live only twelve blocks apart on the Upper East Side, though
we see each other more often at my parents' than we do in the
city. We are both busy. But when my marriage ended I found
myself seeking her out, for companionship, but also because I
wanted to be with someone who understood me instinctively. I
missed that most of all when Laurie left, and yet now I'm not
sure we even had such an understanding, only having been
together for a few years. Perhaps I missed simply the idea of
it. At night, when the sun went down and the city became closed
and cold, and all I felt was loneliness, I would call Pam and
leave a message on her machine. I then waited until she came
home, and within seconds I would begin to pour out my pain to
her. She would listen and then ask why didn't I come over and
spend the night at her place? I would always joke and ask her if
she was sure she was going to be alone that evening -- with Pam
you could never be sure. And then I would jog the twelve blocks
to her building as fast as I could. Every time I stepped into
her apartment it felt in some ways like I was coming home.
We would talk far into the night. She was a wonderful listener,
and when she felt the time was right she would give me her
thoughts. Laurie was selfish and wrong, she would say, you
deserve better, and you need to remember that. Get through this,
and you'll come back stronger for it. I needed to hear that, and
I wanted to believe her. She made it sound so simple, like she
had all the answers, as though life was a chess game and she was
a grand master. Just take care of yourself, she said, and the
rest will fall into place.
"Be like a tree," she said once. "Keep your roots in the ground
and spread your branches and let your leaves soak in the sun."
"And what about when autumn comes?" I asked.
"Accept it. But most of all, don't forget that spring is just
around the corner."
I began to stay at her place four or five nights a week,
sleeping on her couch. In the mornings I would rise early and
walk back to my own apartment to get ready for work. One
morning, as I walked sleepy-eyed into her elevator, I pressed
the wrong button and found myself on the floor that led to the
roof instead of the lobby. I decided to go out and look at
morning coming over the city. As I stood at the edge in the
early November sun and listened to the city wake up, as I felt
the chill and light in the air, I glanced to my side. There,
next to a ventilation shaft, pushing out of the gravel and tar
on the dirty rooftop, was a small sapling. It had perhaps a
dozen leaves, the tips of which were just beginning to turn
yellow. The leaves in the park had already turned and dropped,
and yet here, in the most unlikely of places, a small, lonely
tree struggled for life and clung to its green.
I stood and looked at that tree for half an hour, and I decided
that maybe things would be all right. I rarely stayed overnight
at Pam's after that.
We are in the middle of a conversation about whether Pam should
be wearing blush on such a hot day. Pam has worn blush since she
was eight years old. Joyce, who asked the question, has taken
the negative. "Especially out here," she says.
"It's Long Island, for Christ's sake, not the Yukon," I reply.
"Besides, there's a lot of pain in this face that I need to
cover up," Pam quips.
Joyce takes her seriously. "You? Pain? Ha."
Pam opens her mouth to reply, but I put my hand on her knee and
say quietly, "Don't get her started." Suddenly our parents show
up. They smile and hug and kiss us while we exchange greetings.
Even my father, who usually shakes my hand. Then he lingers
around Pam. She was always his favorite.
"So what's up?" Pam asks.
"You're not pregnant, are you?" says Joyce. Pam rolls her eyes,
but I think it might be Joyce's way of trying to make a joke.
"Of course not," our mother says, laughing. "We just have
something we have to tell you. But it can wait until after
dinner."
"Well, I'm certainly wet with anticipation," Pam says. Joyce
shoots her a glance. It seems the wine might be starting to go
to her head.
I help my father get the barbecue going. He is wearing his tall
chef's hat and his apron. It has an inscription on the front, a
paraphrase of Descartes: "I cook, therefore I am." He loves it.
Cooking now gives him more joy than anything else in his life,
except my mother.
Joyce insists we eat inside, "because of the flies." After we
are seated my father brings the food to the table: teriyaki
chicken, asparagus polonaise and a chardonnay he has picked.
Joyce has a glass, but Pam and I decline and stick to the zin.
My father pretends that he is upset at our lack of manners, and
my mother smiles to herself.
One by one we finish and wait, as if a show is about to begin.
But first my father must serve strawberries and cream. Halfway
through my mother puts her spoon down, and we know that is our
cue to begin listening.
"Your father and I have made a decision," she says.
I look at Pam, then at Joyce. The last time my mother said this
they completely redid the interior of the house. We were all
still living at home then. We made it through that, but barely.
She looks at my father. "Do you want to tell them, dear, or
should I?"
"Go right ahead, dear."
She looks us each in the face for about a second and says, "Your
father and I are going to get a divorce."
I start to laugh but nearly choke on a strawberry. Pam raises
her eyebrows, trying to figure out the joke. Joyce reaches for
her glass of wine. My parents wait and watch us, but nobody
moves.
"I told you they wouldn't believe us," my mother says to my
father.
"Really, Mother," Pam says. "We would have come out just for a
visit -- you didn't have to make up some lame excuse to trick
us."
"Darling, we're serious."
"Right," says Joyce. "You've been married for thirty-three
years, happier than any couple I've ever seen, and now you're
going to get a divorce?" It is, for her, quite a long sentence.
"Yes. Why not?"
"Why not? Because people don't do that, that's why not! I
thought you loved each other."
Finally my father says something. "We do love each other, Joyce,
very much." Simple.
My mother embellishes. "Of course we love each other,
sweetheart. We always will. You can't stop that."
"You're serious, aren't you?" I ask.
She looks straight at me and her eyes ask me to believe her.
"Yes, Marc, we are."
I stumble for a word. I ask a question, some combination of
_how_ and _why_.
"Well," she says, "we've decided that it would be best if we
stopped being husband and wife and simply remained friends. Now
that you all are grown and we're both older, we want to do
different things. As you know, I've always wanted to take a few
years and travel around the world. Now finally I have the time
and the money. I might even settle in France. Who knows? We've
thought about it and talked about it for quite some time now. It
feels right."
"And what about you, Daddy?" It is Pam.
"Well, I have a chance to open a restaurant in California with a
partner. I think I'd like to sell the business and give it a
try. Maybe write my cookbook, finally."
"How splendid!" Pam exclaims, too enthusiastically.
Joyce interrupts. "But aren't you going to miss each other?"
"Of course," says my mother. "It's not like we'll never see each
other again. It is possible to love someone without being next
to them every day. But after spending half your life with
someone, even someone you love, well... sometimes a change is
appropriate. Who knows what will happen? Maybe we'll each meet
someone and fall in love. Maybe we'll have dinner three years
from now and decide to get married again." She pauses, then
adds, "Wouldn't that be romantic?"
None of us says anything. Finally my father speaks.
"This may be hard for you to imagine at your ages, but a person
gets tired of chasing security their entire life. The familiar
can become the despised, if you're around it too long. The best
hitters go out on top."
"What a terrible analogy," I say. "This is life, not a game." If
nothing else, my own divorce is teaching me that.
"Well, I don't know if it's an analogy," my father says, "but
it's certainly like an analogy." He smiles. It is one of his
oldest jokes.
After a short pause Joyce asks him, "Aren't you afraid of dying
alone?"
"No," my father says, becoming serious. "I'm more afraid of
dying without doing all the things I want to do."
After the dishes are cleared my parents tell us they are going
on a walk. I think they want to give us time to talk. We drift
to the den, where Pam begins to shoot pool. She has graduated
from wine to vodka and soda. I take a cue stick and join her.
Joyce keeps to one side of the room and paces.
"I just can't believe it," she says.
"I know." I don't know what else to say.
"I mean, look at us. They were our last hope."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Pam asks.
"Well, look at us," Joyce says. "None of us has ever had a
successful relationship. At least they did. I always found that
comforting."
"I resent that," says Pam. "Speak for yourself."
"I didn't mean this week," Joyce sneers. Pam glares at her, but
having scored a quick point, Joyce keeps going. "I thought they
would never split up. I mean, of all the people in the world...
it's like they were made for each other." Joyce sits down, and
suddenly she looks very weary. It seems that she is taking this
the hardest of anyone. I suppose it is because she has the
strongest need to believe that things can work out between two
people. Misanthropes always do. She hides it extremely well, but
it only convinces me more. I know her too well.
"Well, I can sure as hell understand it," Pam says. She puts her
head down and takes a quick shot, hitting the ball hard.
"Thirty-three years is a long time. Things would get pretty
boring after that long. Imagine sleeping with the same person
for thirty-three years. What could you possibly do that would be
new and exciting?"
"They seem to suffer through it okay," I say.
"Sure, but they must wonder about other people. They must want
the excitement of meeting someone, kissing them for the first
time, doing it with someone new."
Joyce always responds to Pam's remarks like this, and she's
looking to score another point. "Not everyone thinks about sex,
you know."
"True," Pam replies, as she sees an opening. "Some people
actually have it, too."
Joyce leaves the room.
With Joyce gone I try to sort through some of what has happened
today. I am still shocked about my parents. Like Joyce, I too
have often compared our parents' relationship to our own. Either
we missed something crucial, or they simply found the secret. I
am upset at them -- though proud too, in a way I can't quite
explain. But after a while I realize I also feel something about
Pam -- she has not said much about all this. She has been too
cavalier, too flippant. At the same time, I sense a tightness in
the room that seems to come from her.
I have always been the only one who could ever really talk to
Pam. We are only a year apart, which is a big reason for our
closeness. I was her big brother -- not that I could ever teach
her much, because she always seemed to know more than I did,
about everything. But I could protect her or rescue her,
depending on the situation. Joyce was never able to do that, for
either of us. Joyce is four years older than me, but she has
always seemed like she was somewhere else, like she was from
another generation. Even now, when four years is not as long as
it once was.
"Pook," I say, "aren't you the least bit surprised?"
Now that we are alone I can use her nickname. She made me stop
using it in front of others when she was eleven, but she's never
objected to my using it in private. It is my way of letting her
know it is only me.
"No," she says, acting tough. "Why should I be?"
She seems prepared to dig in deep if I pursue this particular
line of the conversation, so I make a slight shift. "Well, you
certainly were surprised when I announced I was getting a
divorce."
"That was different."
"How?"
"For one thing, you called me every night for a month and
cried."
Pam has been slippery like this for all of her adult life. She
is the kind of person everyone wants to be around -- always fun,
with a twinkle in her eye. But if you ask her something deep, if
you get too close to her core, she jabs and darts and ends up
behind you, arms back down at her sides, smiling while working
to catch her breath. Everyone gives up at this point. But today
I feel that I should pursue her across the ring.
We play nine-ball for several minutes, exchanging brief phrases
so that the game proceeds on course. I can tell she is thinking.
After she misses an easy shot she stands up and looks at me.
"What was the first thing you thought of when Mother said they
were getting a divorce?"
"I don't know. Disbelief, I guess."
"No. I mean what was the first image that came into your mind?"
I pause.
"Laurie."
What had flashed into my mind was how bitter I felt when she
left, and how much it hurt. It hurt because after everything
that happened I still loved her in many ways and yet I almost
hated her, and I didn't want to do that. And I missed her and I
wanted another chance, and I knew that was gone forever. It hurt
because I wanted exactly what my parents had, and yet every day
I wondered if I would ever find that or if I was the type who
would bounce through life without it, making do, bucking up,
falling down. I wondered how my parents could willingly give it
up. I still thought about her fifty times a day. I feel afraid
to try again. I didn't know how to get what my parents had, let
alone ever think about giving it up. It is strange that a single
name can come to symbolize so much.
Pam pauses to let my feelings soften. Finally she says, "You
know what I immediately thought of?"
"What?"
"Miss Flowers."
"Dad's secretary?"
"Yes."
"Why?" I am surprised. It has been years since we had last seen
her. On summer days when we were bored my mother would put Joyce
in charge and give us train fare to go to my father's office for
lunch. Miss Flowers was always the first and last thing we saw
there. She was a large woman who smelled funny -- in a former
time she would have been called a spinster. Even children could
tell she was lonely. She doted over my father, and she doted
over us because we were his children. Pam, especially, had never
liked her.
She looks at me but is silent.
"Why, Pook?"
She puts her cue stick back in the rack and goes behind the bar
to mix herself another drink. She says nothing, and I look at
her but decide to wait. Finally she looks back and says what she
has been thinking. "Because she was an old maid who wouldn't
leave Daddy alone."
Before I can respond she adds, "And because she didn't like me
either." I am surprised to hear her say this.
"She liked you," I say. "She was just an old lady. She never
meant you any harm."
"Like hell!" she says in a sudden burst that surprises me. "Like
hell she didn't. She never liked me because I was pretty."
"Pam, really."
"She didn't. She was a lonely old bat, and she wanted other
people to be unhappy too. Just like Joyce. I'll bet Joyce ends
up like her someday...."
She is rarely so blatant. Suddenly I feel sorry for Joyce.
"At least Joyce acts like she cares," I say coldly.
"What other choice does she really have?"
I am able to restrain myself. I let it pass and wait a minute.
"Pam, come on, this isn't about Joyce. It's not about you being
pretty either. What's the matter?"
She swirls the ice in her glass, but it is clear she is only
stalling. I walk over near her and sit gently on a stool. Her
head is down. The room is growing dark as the day begins to end.
Quietly I say, "What is it, Pam?"
She looks at me, and her eyes are moist. She starts to say
something, then stops. Then, quietly, she says, "I thought she
wanted Daddy for herself."
"Miss Flowers?"
"Yeah. I thought she wanted to take him away from us. And I
thought he was going to leave us for her, especially after he
and Mom would have a fight," she says. "In fact, I expected it."
Then after a pause during which she seems to go somewhere far
away, she adds, quietly, "They all leave you in the end anyway."
She looks away and says, "Every single one of them."
I don't know what to say. Pam has always been so together that
I've never really had to comfort her before. She always seems so
happy that I thought she was, that she was living the way she
wanted to. I have always admired her because I thought she made
her choices for the right reasons, not out of fear like so many
other people. And now suddenly it is clear to me that she
struggles inside as much as the rest of us.
After a speechless minute I get up from my stool and move behind
the bar toward her. She lets me hold her. At first her body is
tense and it feels awkward. But slowly she softens in my arms
and I feel her body begin to shake. I feel her fight it too.
Finally she lets out a long, soft moan and begins to cry, slowly
at first, then harder. For a moment I imagine it is Laurie I am
holding. I let her cry into my shoulder until she is finished,
until her eyeliner runs down her cheek so that she looks like a
sad clown. She looks up at me and I try to smile, but then I
realize that for the first time ever she is looking at me for an
answer.
"Be like a tree, Pam," I whisper.
She wipes her cheek and purses her lips and tries to smile.
"Marc, I'm so damn tired of autumns and winters and springs.
Whatever happened to summer?"
All this time, I thought she had it all figured out. "It will be
okay, Pook," is the only thing I can think of to say. I am not
completely convincing, and I know she knows it.
Just then we hear some shouting in the back yard, followed by
two quick splashes. Pam wipes her eyes and we leave the den and
go to the sliding glass door that leads to the deck. Joyce is
already there. The three of us stand beside one other and look
out -- the misanthrope, the clown and the... I don't know. The
wounded, maybe. The wounded who wants to heal.
"Mom and Dad are back," Joyce says vacantly. "They're
skinny-dipping."
We look out into the dusk at my parents. Their clothes are
hanging on the trellis, which stands among the lush, green
foliage of their yard. They do not even seem to think that we
might be watching. They splash and laugh and seem oblivious to
the world, as if only the two of them are in it. I wonder when
they will file the papers.
David Appell (appell@usa.net)
-------------------------------
David Appell types 500 characters a minute, 375 of which are
"backspace." The ratio of what he's learned to what he's
forgotten is still greater than one, but slipping. He currently
lives in Vermont, whose unofficial motto is "Nine months of
winter, three months of bad skiing." His home on the Web is
<http://www.together.net/~appell/>.
Way of the Wolf by S. Kay Elmore
====================================
....................................................................
If empathy was our only guide, could we so easily separate
ourselves from the animals?
....................................................................
The screen door slammed as Dina ran out of the house, her back
stinging with pain from her dad's slap. There had been no
warning this time. He'd lashed out at her almost casually when
she was too slow going out the door to do her chores.
Her mother had told her softly not to cry. "Bug, honey, just go
take care of your animals, dinner will be ready soon." She
wanted to cry. She stuffed the cry down into her stomach and
promised to let it out soon.
Her family called her Bug, but her dad called her awful names.
He wasn't her real dad -- she knew that because her real dad
died in a war when she was a tiny baby. Her mother had a picture
of him in the big photo album, and she liked to look at him. He
wasn't tall like her new dad, Tom. He was short, with dark hair
and dark skin. Her mom said he was an Indian, and Bug was part
Indian too.
She stopped where she knew he could see her from the kitchen
window. She reached for the long wooden hook she needed to close
the tall chicken coop doors, and went around the building
slowly, closing and latching each door for the night. When she
was out of sight, she dashed to the low doghouse, built of straw
bales and plywood, and crawled inside the narrow entrance.
Inside the doghouse, she could sense that Abi was there. The
aged wolf-husky mix had been with her for as long as she could
remember. The dog belonged to her real dad, and when he died,
she had become Dina's. Dina called her Abi, because her mother
said the dog's name was so long and complicated that only her
father could pronounce it right. Abi would do. She was stout
with age, and limped along on three legs. A coyote trap had
taken off one of her front legs halfway down.
She found the wolf-dog asleep in the farthest corner. The girl
crept into the corner and buried her head into her warm side,
sniffling her tears into the thick fur. Abi sighed, rested her
head on the dirt floor, and closed her eyes. Bug put her grubby
arm around the body of the dog, holding her like a child grips a
teddy bear in the panic of a nightmare, and rocked back and
forth on the ground, crying.
In her mind, Bug made a picture of a small puppy, wounded and
whining, curled between the paws of its mother. She sent the
picture to Abi, so the dog would understand how she felt.
Slowly, a picture came back to her: the puppy nestled against
her side, safe and warm. As if to punctuate her point, the dog
lifted her head and licked Dina's arm twice.
Dina remembered the first time he'd beaten her. She had dropped
a jelly jar onto the kitchen floor. Her new father had taken off
his belt and put four red welts across her back. Four. She
remembered. She remembered standing in the bathroom with her
mother, looking over her shoulder in the mirror and counting to
four in a small voice. Her mother had put her in the bathtub and
washed her back with a soft sponge. Dina remembered her mother
crying.
Bug stroked the thick ruff on Abi's neck, and the old dog
sighed. The dog's eyes flicked to look at her, then to look at
the open end of the doghouse, then closed to nap under the
welcome caresses.
Abi's head lifted suddenly when the screen door to the trailer
slammed open. Mother's voice called out over the yard: "Dina!
Dina-Bug? Come to dinner while it's hot!" Her voice sounded so
normal, as if she were ignorant of Bug's misery.
Bug crawled out of the tiny opening to the doghouse, followed
soon after by the old wolf-dog. Abi limped three-legged behind
her, holding up her bad front leg so she wouldn't have to stand
on it. Bug filled the water bucket for the other dogs, and set
it carefully at the edge of the two half-circles made by their
restraining chains. These were the sheepdogs, her dad's prized
Border collies.
The wooden steps creaked as she stepped up to the trailer door.
She let out her breath, opened the door and went inside. Abi
scratched a little at the doormat, turned around three times,
and plopped down on the steps with an audible grunt.
"What took you so long? We've been waiting dinner on you." Her
dad's accusing voice greeted her at the door.
"I'm sorry. I had to give the dogs some water. Sandy knocked it
over again," She kept her eyes down as she stood, hands shoved
in her pockets, waiting for approval to sit at the table.
"I don't like you being late. Don't make me tell you twice." She
winced inside, her face impassive. "Sit down."
Tom was a big man, taller than her mother. But he was heavy set,
his stomach round and distended from drinking too much beer. He
had an orange stain on his middle finger from the home-rolled
cigarettes he smoked. He said it saved money that way.
She pulled out her chair carefully, so it wouldn't squeak on the
floor, and made sure to pull it back up close, so she wouldn't
drop any food on her lap. She'd been yelled at for being messy
at the table. Mom dished out dinner, a stir fry of vegetables
and scrambled eggs, with enough ham hock mixed in to make you
remember the meat. She thought her mom was pretty. She had brown
hair falling down behind her back nearly to her waist. She was
small and thin, the lines of age just starting to show around
her cornflower blue eyes.
Bug tasted her dinner and wondered what it would be like to eat
with chopsticks. Did kids in China eat food like this at their
dinner tables?
"Mom, do you think I could carve some chopsticks out of cedar
wood?" She looked up.
"Yeah, I guess so. You're getting to be pretty good with a
pocket knife. Just be careful, okay?"
"Okay mom, I will," She put another bite of dinner in her mouth,
reached down to get another one, carefully, so the fork didn't
scrape the plate and make a noise. She chewed carefully, so she
didn't make a lot of noise with her mouth. She'd been slapped
for that. She didn't think chopsticks would make any noise on
her plate.
"Do you have homework?" Tom asked.
"Nah, I did it at recess today. Just some math worksheets.
Nothing hard."
Her mother beamed "She's getting all A's in school, Babe. I'll
bet she's the smartest girl in her class." Mom looked at Bug and
smiled big, showing her teeth. Bug smiled back.
"Mom, there's a science project due pretty soon. They are going
to have an alternative energy contest at school. We have to do a
project about energy and there's a fifty dollar prize if you
win. Can you help me with one?"
"Sure, honey, what do you want to do it on?" Mother put down her
fork.
"Well, since we have the solar cells on the roof, and I helped
to put them up, I wanted to do a project about that. Will you
help me? I need some pictures of the stuff on the roof and the
batteries, and that kind of stuff."
"Sure, I can get the camera out tomorrow." Her mother's voice
held a note of finality.
"Mr. Beals says that the project is due at the end of the month,
and I want to do a poster, and show what the solar cells do and
how they make electricity. They're gonna have judges come around
and look at all of them. Mr. Beals says that the President made
the contest up and it's goin' on all over the place."
"It sounds fine, Bug." She heard the warning in her mother's
voice again. Mother looked over at her husband across the table,
hopeful.
"And the prize is fifty dollars!" Bug continued cheerfully. "And
if you win, you get to go to Richfield for the next part of the
contest, and if you win there, you get two hundred dollars! He
said that the very best projects get to go to Washington D.C.
and the President will give you lots of money and you get to be
on TV and everything!" Bug chattered at her mother excitedly,
trying to win her approval. "Think what I could get with two
hun--"
Tom crashed his hand down on the table next to Bug's plate,
"God! Shut up, willya?" Tom cut her off sharply, pointing his
fork at her for emphasis, "I don't want to spend my dinner
listening to your voice yap." The fork was inches from her face.
"Tom..." Mother's voice trailed off, disappointed. "She's only
nine. Let her do a science project for school."
"Yeah," Bug added cautiously, watching the fork, "I have to do
one to get a grade." She wondered, would she get away with it?
Maybe mom was on her side. Maybe.
"Well, how much is it going to cost? I don't want to throw all
my money away on you, ya know." He went back to eating his
dinner, his threat made.
Silently, inside, Bug sang victory. She sent a picture of a
puppy playing in the grass to Abi. She'd actually won this time.
"Um," Bug started, thought a bit, then continued, "I need a
couple of pictures, and a piece of poster." Her voice picked up,
pleading, "It won't cost more than a couple of dollars, really."
"Yeah, whatever. Go ahead." He reached over to turn up the wick
on the oil lamp.
Nothing more was said over dinner.
"Okay!" Mr. Beals walked around his desk to stand in front of
the class, "I gave you an assignment on Friday to come up with
an idea for the science fair. Everybody have one?" He looked
around at the faces of his students, "Mitch? You're first. What
is your science project going to be, and how do you plan to
research it?"
He went around the room in order, the third graders stood one by
one and recited their projects. Dina couldn't help but snicker
inside at some of them. They were stupid, she could tell that
hers was good.
"Dina? You're next." He motioned with his hand for her to stand.
"Um, my science project is photovoltaic cells and how they
work." She used the big word, knowing that most of her
classmates didn't know what it was. She liked to show them up.
"Really?" He smiled at her. She could tell he was surprised.
"Where are you going to get that information?"
"Well." She took a breath, "We have photovoltaic cells at our
house, because we don't have power lines where we are, and I
helped put them up, and, um, my dad has all the books about
them."
"Gawd!" A hateful voice came from the back of the class. "You
don't have electricity? No wonder you're so weird." The thin
blonde girl rolled her eyes.
"Kim, that's enough." Mr. Beals warned. The tone of his voice
was just like Tom's. "Well, Dina, it sounds like you wont have
any problem with the project. Sam? How about you?"
She sat, grateful that he'd moved on to the next person. She put
her eyes down to her notebook and continued drawing the unicorn
in the margin of the page. She tried not to think about Kim
Whittaker. She hated her, with her blonde hair and blue eyes,
her snooty voice. Kim always had nice clothes, bought at
Christiansen's and ZCMI. She had a little gold chain around her
neck. She lived in a real house and had a phone, and she was the
most popular girl in the class.
Bug pictured herself as a big growling wolf, and Kim as a scared
rabbit. Her wolf-self pounced on the Kim-rabbit and tore its
head off. Bug smiled to herself.
Since her family had the only farm up in the hills, there
weren't any other kids around for her to play with. After
school, she fed the dogs, and took care of the chores for the
night. She wondered why she had to work so much. She knew that
the other kids in school went to each other's houses, watched
TV, or played video games after school. She almost never had
time for that sort of thing, even if she had neighbors.
The sun was still shining when she finished her chores, so she
slipped off to the green shade of trees down by the creek,
across the ewe's field, with her fishing pole and her dog. She
hardly ever had time left after chores to go play by the creek.
She stopped in the ewe's field to call her very own goat,
Dancer. After Dancer's mama abandoned her in the field, Bug kept
her from dying and nursed her with a coke bottle and a rubber
nipple. The little doe was convinced that Bug was her mother.
Once she was across the field, Bug threw her head back and
brayed like a goat. A few seconds later, she was answered by
Dancer, running across the field and _maaaa-_ing for all she was
worth.
The little doe slid to a stop in front of her, legs going in all
directions. She jumped up on her hind feet and pawed the air,
then pranced a little. Goats didn't understand pictures like the
dogs did. They talked to each other by dancing, by the way they
held their ears and tails. Her greeting dance was just that --
it said how happy she was to see her and how much she missed
her. Bug set off across the field with her dancing goat and
limping dog, to see if Lost Creek would give up a rainbow trout
for her dinner.
Her favorite place was a small grove of gnarled scrub oak trees.
Some of their branches bent so low to the ground they made a
fine place to sit. They sat on the creekbank for the rest of the
evening, pretending to fish. Bug had been fishing that creek for
as long as she could hold a pole, but had only caught two trout
so far. She sent pictures of squirrels and rabbits hiding in the
brush to Abi, who wandered off on her own small adventure to
find them.
As the shadows of the trees lengthened across the grove, Bug
heard the rustling sounds of deer in the wild rose bushes. She
froze, and stilled the little goat beside her. In her mind, she
pictured herself as a goat, standing quietly by the creek. Deer
were easy to fool. If she thought very hard about being a goat,
they wouldn't be scared of her at all. It was almost as if she
were a goat to them. One by one, the big white-tail deer
filtered into the grove.
The deer sensed them, and saw two goats lazing by the creek.
They stepped near the water to drink, unafraid of the two
creatures that shared the grove. They had seen goats before, and
these two were no threat to them. They picked their heads up
suddenly, alerted, and moved away from the open water.
Crashing through the underbrush, Abi returned, barking wildly at
the deer. They bounded quickly across the grove, back into the
brush at the edge of the field. Bug, no longer a goat, called
out to her dog, but it was no use. Abi leaped into the brush
after them, her gait slowed by her bad leg. "Abi! Abi come
back!" She jumped from the bank, and followed the trail into the
brush as far as she could fit. "A-beeee!"
A few minutes later, the wolf-dog returned, sending happy
pictures of a wolf pack chasing deer, the smell of hunting prey,
herself running at the head, running with four good legs. She
sent pleased feelings of full tummies and lazy dogs.
Abi was right -- it was dinner time. The trio wandered back
across the field. This time they were fishless, but had two
handfuls of dried rose hips from the wild rosebushes by the
creek. They were old, hard and wrinkled from the winter, but
they would still make good tea.
Two weeks went by, and her poster project was almost done. The
pictures her mom took were put away carefully in a kitchen
drawer, and she even bought a marker for her when she got the
poster paper. Bug had spent a long time carefully copying down
the information from the big book of her dad's. What words she
didn't understand, she looked up in the dictionary at school.
She used lots of words she didn't understand, to make it look
better.
On the morning of the science fair, she got up at five, as
usual, and went about her chores with a sense of urgency. There
were eggs to get, and chickens to feed and water, endless chores
done every morning, rain or shine. Abi trailed behind her, her
placid eyes watching everything her favorite child did, her
limping gait steady, if slow. Abi followed her into every pen
and pasture, the sheep not giving her a second glance. They
knew, somehow, that the wolf-dog was no threat to them. She was
too old, and lame.
Bug let the sheep out to pasture and filled their water tank,
making sure to turn the pump off. She once forgot to turn the
pump off, and she still had a scar on her thigh where Tom had
whipped her with a metal fly swatter.
Her favorite part of the morning was milking the goats.
Sunflower and Terra were the only ones with milk to speak of.
Their kids had died at birth, so they were inside the barn with
the pregnant does, and needed milking.
She liked the warm smells of the mama goats, she liked their big
keyhole eyes and floppy ears. They crowded around her as she
opened the gate, crying for attention. She got a cup of oats,
walked inside the milking stall and let Sunflower get in. Bug
pulled up the stool and got the milking pan from the wall. She
leaned her head against the warm side of the goat as she milked.
The clean swish-swish of the milk was calming, rhythmic.
As she milked she sang to herself, following the rhythm of the
milk in the pan, "Gonna win, Gonna Win. I'm the best, I'm the
best." Abi sat to her side, tongue lolling, tail hopefully
thumping on the ground, sending images of a full milk pail,
herself drinking from it. The goats, too, did not fear the old
dog. She was as accepted as the child, a regular part of a
regular morning.
Bug poured part of the milk into two beat-up pie pans on the
ground. The dog lapped happily from one, and she lifted up the
other to the hayloft. Barn cats materialized from the rafters
and meowed pitifully, then growled to each other as they
crouched together at the pan enjoying their breakfast.
The long drive to school was silent. Tom did his best to
navigate the old truck down the muddy, rutted roads, ruined by
too much rain and too little care from the county. Her project
poster sat on her lap, wrapped in a black plastic bag to protect
it. She clutched her arms around it, protecting it from Tom. He
would ruin it and blame it on her if she gave him half a chance.
She took the poster to the gym on time, and set it up with two
yardsticks her mom lent her so it wouldn't fall down. There were
other projects in the gym, so she looked at them. They were all
stupid. Hers was the best, she knew it.
During third period, Mr. Beals came into Mrs. Conners' class and
called her name.
Her heart raced. It was the judges! They had come to talk to her
about her project. She felt light-headed when she walked to the
gym with Mr. Beals. She talked to the judges, two men and a very
pretty lady in a suit. They asked her questions about her big
words, and smiled at her when she told them about the process
that turns light into electricity. She showed them the pictures,
and pointed out the different parts of the electric relay
system, the battery storage, the power gauges.
They thanked her, shook her hand, and sent her back to class.
At seventh period, the Principal got on the intercom and called
everyone to assemble in the gym. The whole school was there, all
four grades, sitting on the bleachers, teachers herding students
like Border collies. Bug sat alone at the bottom of the
bleachers, bouncing her knee nervously, her arms wrapped around
herself.
Mr. Beals got up and talked about the science project, how the
President had made it up, and "the importance of alternative
energy resources for America."
She ignored him. She watched the judges, especially the pretty
lady in the suit. Mr. Beals finished talking, and the lady got
up to the podium to speak.
"The runners up for the Alternative Energy contest are..." She
called out name after name and Bug sat up straight.
"Our winners for the Nadir Valley contest are," Bug heard every
word echo in the gum, "Samuel Johnson for his report on garbage
energy, Third place!"
Bug swallowed. She had a lump in her throat, and she needed to
pee. She watched Sam walk up to the line of kids on the gym
floor, with his white ribbon in hand.
"Second place goes to Amy Thorsen for her report on Nuclear
energy!" Amy got up, laughing, and bounced the step that Bug was
sitting on. She ran to get her red ribbon and stand in line next
to Sam. Bug couldn't breathe.
"Our first place winner from the third grade, with a remarkable
report..." Bug trembled. She couldn't hear. "Photovoltaic
Energy, by Dina Cooper!"
Someone was shaking her. Mrs. Conners laid her hand on her
shoulder, "Go on, Dina. Walk up there, hon!" Mrs. Conners gave
her a proud smile, showing her teeth.
She didn't feel the floor of the gym. She floated over to the
pretty lady, who handed her a blue ribbon. She drifted over to
stand next to Amy and Sam. Cameras flashed. The runners up were
told to sit down, and the photographer from the paper took a
picture of her holding up her blue ribbon, Sam and Amy next to
her.
One of the man judges came to talk to them. He said that he was
taking their projects to Richfield with him, and that the
contest for the county was going to be there. The contest was
going to be held on Tuesday, and they would be driven to
Richfield by the Principal. Amy and Sam were dismissed to go
home, but the Judge told Bug to wait, and that he had to talk to
her.
He smiled down at her, "Dina, you are going to receive your
prize of fifty dollars at the county contest, along with the
winners from the other regions." He looked at her faded blue
jeans and T-shirt. "There will be people there from all the
papers, so can you dress nice?"
She looked at the floor. "I'm sorry, Mister, Um," She looked up
at him, tried to look him in the eye. "these are the only pants
I have that don't have a hole in them."
He looked at the floor. "Well." He put his hand to his glasses.
"I'm sure you'll find something," and turned to walk away.
Bug felt suddenly stupid. She was ashamed of her clothes, ugly,
old and bought from the Goodwill. Her Gramma used to make her
pretty dresses, sewing them on the old Singer which stood now in
her mother's bedroom. She had a whole closet full of clothes
then, but she had grown out of all of them. Her mother put the
dresses in a big box, saying that she'd save them if Bug ever
had a little sister who could wear them.
Mom was there to pick her up after school. The rattling old
truck looked out of place with the other cars at the curb, but
Bug didn't care. Mom hardly ever came to pick her up. She ran
out to the truck, grinning and yelling.
"I won! I won fifty dollars!" She didn't care if the other kids
heard her. "Mom! I won! I get to go to Richfield on Tuesday! I'm
gonna win the two hundred dollars, I know it!"
"Oh Honey! That's great! I'm very proud of you." Her mom reached
over the gearshift and hugged her daughter tightly. She laughed
with her, "Lets go get ice cream to celebrate." Mom put the
truck in gear, and they rattled off down the street. The little
burger stand on main street had the best ice cream in the world,
and the mini cones were a quarter each. Bug got two.
"Richfield?" Tom yelled at dinner. "I don't give a damn what she
won, I don't want some bastard I don't know driving her to
Richfield!" Bug could almost see the chimney on the oil lamp
shake with the force of his words.
"Tom! Dammit, she won the science fair! Can't you let her have a
little fun? Jesus Christ!" Her mother yelled back, pleading in
her voice.
"But, Tom," Bug started. "They're going to give me fifty dollars
and I have to be there to get it." She looked at her dinner
plate.
"Listen, I'm glad you won the science thing." He said it so full
of hate she winced openly, "but damnit, you have to go that far?
Richfield is an hour away! I don't want to throw my schedule to
shit to come get you in Richfield after this thing is over."
"But... the principal is going to drive us back too. That's what
they said." She could feel the tears behind her eyes, making her
throat hurt.
"Dammit, Tom," Her mother added "If it's that much trouble, I'll
go get her."
"We'll see."
There was no more said over dinner.
Richfield was big, bigger than Nadir Valley. It had stoplights.
The school car pulled into the Richfield high school parking lot
and the three anxious students got out. Bug had done her best
with her clothes. Her mom unpacked an old dress that Gramma had
made, and discovered that if they took out a tuck here, and put
elastic there, the dress fit. It was a little short, above her
knees, but that didn't matter.
The day passed nervously for Bug. She walked around, looking at
the other entries from all over the county. She was in the
junior division, and the projects from the high school students
looked so much better than hers. About noon, somebody's
experiment on chemical energy blew up, creating a bad smell in
the gym. Bug informed Mr. Beals that it was a _noxious_ smell,
hoping that he would notice her vocabulary. He laughed.
At two o'clock, the award ceremony began. She didn't win the big
prize, but was a runner up this time around. It didn't matter,
she had won at her school, where it counted. She was called up
with the other Junior division winners, and got her fifty dollar
check. It had her name printed right there on the line. It was
hers.
At three, the ceremony was still going on, the high school kids
lined up on the gym floor. Bug was worried. She needed to get
home.
"Mr. Beals, when can we leave? My mom is supposed to pick me up
at school, and if I'm not there, she's gonna get worried."
"Oh, dear." He looked genuinely concerned. "We can't leave until
this is over, because they still have to take pictures of you
for the Richfield paper. Can you call your mom and tell her
you're still here?"
"Mr. Beals, we don't have a telephone. They don't make telephone
lines that go out as far as we are." She said it apologetically,
then quietly, "Besides, my dad says we cant afford one anyway."
He looked at her and bit his top lip. "I'm sorry, Dina."
She stood for her picture in line, trying to smile. She was
late. It was 3:30, and her mom would be waiting for her. The
cameras flashed in her face, making red spots on her eyes. She
hoped that her knees wouldn't show in the picture.
It was five o'clock when they got back to Nadir Valley. She
looked around for her mom, but she was nowhere to be found. She
sat on the step and put her chin in her hands.
The principal looked at her. "Do you need to use the phone?"
She thought. Her mom's friend, Sara, lived near town and maybe
she would be nice enough to drive her home. "Yeah."
He unlocked the school and was opening up the door when she
heard the truck's engine at the curb.
"Oh!" she said, "There she is. Thanks, Mr. Carter." She ran down
the steps.
She stopped. It wasn't her mom. It was Tom. She slowed and
walked up to the truck.
"Where the hell have you been?" He demanded as she got in. She
could feel his anger. He was furious, and she could hear the
buzzing cloud of pain starting in her head. She was going to get
it this time.
"I'm sorry, they had to take pictures and we couldn't leave
until they were done" She talked quietly, carefully, trying not
to make too much noise. She looked at the floorboard, she
wrapped her arms around her bookbag.
"Look at me." He demanded. She looked at the floorboard. "Look
at me!" He screamed at her, picking her head up roughly by the
chin. "I have been all over town looking for you, and I don't
appreciate it, goddammit." He spat out every word, every word
clear and ringing in the cab of the truck. Spit hit her on the
face.
"I'm sorry..." she squeaked. She couldn't breathe. She wanted to
pull away, to run out of the truck back into the schoolyard, but
if she did, he'd kill her. She wanted to wrench her face out of
his hand, but she couldn't move.
"Right. You'll be sorry." He tossed her head to the side with
his hand, hurting her neck and bruising her chin. He put the
truck in gear and drove. Bug looked out the window, thinking
about the fifty dollar check she had in her bookbag. Would it be
enough for her to live on if she ran away?
He drove in silence as she looked out the window at the passing
roadside. In her head she made pictures of a wolf pack
surrounding a bear. She made the wolves attack the bear, tearing
gashes in his sides and arms. Her face hurt, and her throat was
full and sore from choking down tears. She put the cry back down
into her stomach, trying to save it for later, but the cry made
her stomach hurt, too. She sent the pictures in her head away.
She sent a picture to Abi, a pup running fast, tail between its
legs.
Home loomed in the headlights, the soft glow of the oil lamp
coming from the kitchen. Mom opened the door as they drove up.
Abi lurched up from her place on the porch and stood next to
her, tail up, ears forward. Guarding. Abi sent Bug a picture.
Wolf on a rock, looking over the valley.
"Well? How did it go, Bug?" Mom smiled at her, calling from the
porch. Her voice was cheerful.
Bug climbed out of the truck and walked up to the porch,
dejected. "I didn't win the big prize mom. I was a runner-up."
Her voice was restrained, quiet, meek.
"Aw, honey, that's too bad." Her mom made a sad face. She
reached down to caress Bug's face. Bug winced as her hand
touched the bruised spot on her cheek where Tom had grabbed her.
"What's the matter, Bug?" Her mom turned her cheek to look.
"I'm okay." Bug whispered. "Please, I'm okay." She thought,
Please, please mom, don't make him mad... he'll hurt you too.
Her mother's eyes, her beautiful cornflower blue eyes, turned
the color of ash. "He hit you, didn't he." Her mothers voice
held a tone that scared her. Please don't make him mad, Mom.
"No, mom... I'm okay!" Her voice rose, pitched in fear.
"You son of a..." Her mother cursed, stepping around bug to
confront her husband, "How dare you!" Her voice was cold,
frightening.
Abi's picture was of a wolf pack surrounding a bear. Bug threw
her arms around the wolf-dog, trying to keep her back. All she
thought to send to her was no, but she didn't know how to say
it.
"That ungrateful bitch of a daughter made me wait two hours for
her to get home." Tom pointed his accusatory finger at the
cowering child, "She took her sweet goddamned time getting
there. I don't want to hear any shit from you!" He shook his
finger in his wife's face, "This is _my_ house, by god, and
you'll do whatever the hell I tell you to do!" He yelled so
loudly, so full of violence that the words were nearly tangible
in the twilight air.
Her mother's words came out quietly, she stood with her hands on
her hips, facing him down. "If you ever lay another hand on my
daughter, I'll kill you." She stood in front of him. She looked
him in the eye. Dina was suddenly very scared of her mother. Her
face was cold, her eyes narrowed in rage. She started to walk
toward him. He backed up a step, his face caught in disbelief
that his wife would dare threaten his sovereignty.
"You bastard." She hissed, almost whispering. "You." She backed
him up another step, "How dare you call yourself a man when the
best you can do is beat up on a nine-year old girl." Dina had
never heard her mother talk like that. Mean. She sounded like
she was growling. She stood petrified on the steps as Abi
wriggled out of her grip.
His face reddened with rage. "I'll do whatever I want in my
house. I pay the bills, I put clothes on her back and food on
the table!" He screamed into his wife's face, but for the first
time in her life, Bug heard the sound of fear in his voice.
He shoved his wife aside, knocking her into the gravel. In quick
steps that took hours he crossed the driveway. Bug couldn't move
fast enough and he grabbed her by the hair.
"Stupid!" He pulled her up from the ground, dangling her in the
air with her hair in his fist. "Don't you appreciate what I do
for you?" He shook her. She put her hands to her head and tried
to pry loose his fingers, tried to get away.
She tried to nod, or say something -- anything -- to make him
let her go. Her head was filled with the pictures of the bear,
the bear killing her, killing all of the pack. Somewhere in the
back of her mind, behind the cloud of pain, she heard a low
sound.
Tom dropped her onto the gravel and kicked her where she lay.
"Are you grateful? Huh?"
Her mother was screaming. Bug realized that out here, there were
no neighbors, nobody would hear her. Nobody would come to help
them and he would kill both of them. She struggled to rise, to
run away into the hills to hide.
"When did you ever thank me? Huh?" He knocked her down with the
back of his hand as she tried to crawl away. He kicked her in
the ribs, rolling her over on the driveway. She tried to
breathe, tried to make her mouth form words. He kicked her in
the stomach, and she collapsed, choking and vomiting. Her mother
had stopped screaming but the air was full of bees.
The low sound in the back of her mind got louder. Vicious. It
was a terrible sound, like a horror movie she wasn't allowed to
watch. She didn't have time to think about it because the sun
was setting, and she could hear the darkness as it rolled over
her.
The old wolf on the doorstep abandoned that part of her which
was still a dog. Inside, there was a heart there that knew
nothing of humans. She let it come rushing out into her teeth, a
snarling growl. The smell of blood in her head and the screaming
infuriated her. Her precious child, her pup, lay whimpering in
pain on the ground, and the enemy stood in front of her.
The wolf launched herself from the ground on three bad legs and
ripped all of her good teeth into the enemy's thigh. She tasted
blood, and bit down again. She tore through jean and flesh,
maddened with instinct. She smelled the terror in him and it
made her bolder. She attacked him again, throwing all her weight
into his legs. She heard the sound of metal, and could tell the
man had been hit from behind, good strategy to her wolf-sense.
She lunged for his throat, for the kill. The smell of blood was
good.
The woman stood in mute horror, the shovel in her hand
forgotten. She tried not to register the image of her daughter's
old, lame dog, and what she had done to the man on the ground.
Abi limped to stand growling over the body of her child. She
licked at her face, then lay down beside her, nudging her. Her
pup wouldn't wake up. She flicked her eyes to look at the woman,
trembling and stinking with fear. The woman dropped the long
metal thing in her hand and fell to her knees.
Abi heard her name, spoken softly. She understood her name. The
woman crept forward, hand outstretched, the fear-smell fading.
The old wolf-dog licked her chops, her hackles lowered, and she
lurched painfully to stand protectively beside the girl. That
part of her which was wolf went quietly back down into her old
heart, and she wagged her tail a little, to let the woman know
she should not be afraid.
Dina's mother came slowly toward her and reached out for her
child. She didn't want to think about what she had just done.
She didn't want to look at the bloody man on the ground. Abi
whined, her eyes flicking between the child and the man. Her
mother knelt beside the barely conscious girl, and picked her up
gingerly.
The old dog followed them with her limping, if steady, gait.
They climbed into the cab of the beat-up truck, and the woman
helped the dog up into the cab. She scratched at the floorboard
once or twice, and plopped down with an audible sigh. The woman
put the engine into gear and screeched away.
"Your name?" Deputy Hank Olsen asked kindly, trying to catch the
woman's eyes. She was shaken and crying, and he didn't blame
her. Her daughter was in ICU a few rooms away, with eight broken
ribs and severe internal injuries. The local doctors weren't
sure if they could handle the job alone, and a pediatric
specialist had been 'coptered in from Richfield. Last word, she
was in critical condition.
"Catherine Coop..." She let out a little breath, "Cooper."
"What happened, Catherine?" He put his pen to the paper quietly.
He needed her calm, but he also needed the report. A fat woman,
a friend of Mrs. Cooper's, stood behind her, her hands resting
on her shoulders.
"Um." She wiped her eyes. "My dog... she killed my husband." She
wiped her eyes again. "He was... he was trying to hurt my
daughter. He beat her up all the time." She broke into sobs,
leaning against her friend for comfort.
"Uh, Missus..." He looked at the friend, searching for her name.
"Rasmussen. Sara Rasmussen. My husband is taking the sheriff out
to the farm."
"Sure, Jay and I are the volunteer firefighters together." He
tried to smile at the women. "Mrs. Rasmussen, was Mr. Cooper
often violent? Would you say he beat the child?" He made notes
in his book.
"Officer, go look at that little girl in there and have the
doctor tell you how much of that damage was done tonight, and
how much was there to begin with. He had no business hitting
that child." She looked disgusted. Her voice, however, spoke of
more than disgust.
"Where's the dog?" His brow furrowed. The dog could be rabid.
The family lived pretty far out in the boondocks, after all.
"She's out in the truck." Catherine looked up at him. The woman
understood his concern. "No, mister, she's not a bad dog. She
was protecting us." Mrs. Cooper spoke haltingly through tears.
"She saved Dina's life."
He got what statement he could out of the badly shaken woman. It
looked fairly clear to him. Rabid dog. No charges. He doubted if
the local court would even want touch it. He said as much to
Mrs. Cooper and her friend.
"Do you have a place to stay?" Hank asked Mrs. Cooper.
"She's staying with us. Jay's going to bring some of her things
from the house when he comes back with the Sheriff." Sara
offered.
"And the dog?" He raised his eyebrows and looked dubious. "We
might have to run some tests on her to confirm the rabies. You
all being out in the country and all, that might be a
possibility."
"The dog will stay with us," Mrs. Cooper spoke up defiantly.
"I'll take her to our vet, Officer. He can run the rabies test.
We'll pay for it."
Deputy Olsen sat with them for another two hours, keeping the
curious out of the waiting room. In such a small town, this news
was going to be all over by morning. Doctors came and went with
reports on the child's improvement. She was going to be all
right, but she faced a difficult recovery.
Jay Rasmussen came in with a small suitcase of things for
Catherine. He spoke in low tones to the Deputy, relating the
scene at the Cooper's farm, nodding his bearded head slowly.
They found the body of Tom Cooper in the driveway, his throat
torn out, apparently by the dog.
"I've never seen anything like it. I've seen dog bites, but this
one, well, that dog's got some wolf blood." He shrugged his
shoulders. "Nothing like it I've seen."
"Jay, could you show me this dog? My god, he must be huge. Part
wolf? Jesus."
"She." Jay corrected him.
The men shouldered through the swinging glass doors of the ER
into the parking lot. Jay walked up to the truck, and a large,
grizzled head poked up out of the open window.
"Hey Abi." Jay stuck his hand through the window of the truck to
scratch her around the neck. "C'mon out, girl." He opened the
door, and the wolf-dog struggled to rise from the car seat where
she had been sitting. She looked dubiously at the ground beneath
her, then looked up at Jay and whined. He understood, and
reached carefully around her body to lift her to the ground.
"This dog?" the Deputy looked at the old, three-legged dog. Even
through the blood dried on her muzzle and chest, he could see
the gray of her fur. She was stocky, overweight and moved
painfully with age. "Damn, are you sure, man?"
"Had to be, Hank. The other two were chained up out by the
shed." Abi sat on the asphalt drive, and tilted her head up to
look at Jay.
"She's no more rabid than I am. She was just protecting her own,
I guess."
They stood looking at her for a few long minutes. Jay patted his
thigh and called her over to the back of his own pickup. He
lifted her into the back and closed the tailgate.
"Jay," Hank began. "You know the department is going to want
this dog put down."
Jay said nothing. Abi rested her head on the tailgate and nudged
Jay's hand for attention. He absently put his hand on her head,
brushing the dried blood from her fur.
"I gotta get her cleaned up." His voice choked out of a closed
throat. "Can't have her this way when we take her to the vet."
Hank waved to his friend and tapped his hand on the side of the
tailgate as he stepped out of the way. He watched the dog in the
back of the truck as Jay backed up and stopped to turn out of
the parking lot.
Hank nodded his head toward the pickup truck, "Good dog."
He heard the thumping of her tail on the truck bed.
S. Kay Elmore (zill@airmail.net)
----------------------------------
S. Kay Elmore is a graphic artist and writer from Fort Worth,
Texas. This is her first published short story.
Small Miracles are Better Than None by Peter Meyerson
=========================================================
...................................................................
The definition of "parent" may be a little more flexible than
you think.
...................................................................
After an awkward, desultory meal at a beach front restaurant in
Santa Barbara, they continued driving north along Interstate
101. The boy was too big for a child's car seat and too small to
see properly out the windows. Robert had bought a special
booster for him to sit in.
"Look at that," Robert said, pointing to a row of oil pumps
paralleling the highway. The rigs were rocking back and forth
like davening Jews winnowing secrets from the heavens.
"Did you ever see a praying mantis?" Jonah asked.
"Yeah! That's what they look like!" Robert said a little too
eagerly.
Jonah glanced at him, looked out the window and lapsed into
another of his long silences. They were neither surly nor
rebellious; rather, it seemed to Robert, the child fell into
states of meditative repose, an unsettling quality in a
six-year-old. Once again, Robert thought, the trip was a
mistake.
When they reached San Luis Obispo, he suggested they continue
north along Route 1, the coast road.
"How come?" Jonah asked.
"Well. It's longer, but it's more beautiful. We'll see cows
grazing right on the beach and there are tide pools with little
animals in them. After that, we go up into the hills. It's
slower driving because the road's twisty, but it's fun, and
we'll see way out into the ocean. What do you say?" Jonah
shrugged and Robert took the coast road.
Later, crossing a broad stretch of grassy flatland, Jonah rose
out of his seat and looked over Robert's shoulder toward the
sea. "Those aren't cows. They're cattle," he observed, breaking
another silence.
"And you know the difference." Robert was impressed.
"People kill the cattle and eat them, but they're nice to cows
because they give us milk."
Robert smiled. "So you and mommy don't eat meat?"
"Mommy doesn't. I like Big Macs."
"And she doesn't mind?"
"Uh-uh. Even when I leave some over. We bring it home for
Merton."
"Merton?"
"He licked your hand when you came to pick me up," Jonah said, a
hint of disappointment in his voice. Robert wished someone had
told him the dog's name was Merton.
He parked by a narrow strip of beach and they headed for a rocky
outcropping. An early afternoon wind bullied the tide toward the
high water mark, and above, more powerful gusts shepherded a
swollen flock of black-bottomed clouds toward the mountains to
the east. Rain tonight, Robert thought. He hated driving in rain
and was glad they would reach their destination before it
arrived.
Jonah clutched his little stuffed duck as they walked along the
shore searching for shallow pockets of life among the rocks.
Sandpipers, pecking at the ever-changing margins of the sea,
scattered before them, and gulls, like gulls everywhere, dipped
and wheeled in raucous disputes that circled the earth. Robert
didn't care for gulls; they stole the eggs of birds who mated
for life.
Jonah found a glistening basin of shallow water and was kneeling
beside it concealing his excitement as Robert came over.
"That's a sea urchin, right?" he said, pointing to a black ball
of quills.
"Uh-huh. I know this sounds weird, but some people, like in
Japan, eat them."
"That must hurt," Jonah said, frowning.
"They don't eat the spines," he laughed, lifting the creature
gingerly and exposing its underside. "It's this soft part that's
supposed to taste good. Almost everything gets eaten somewhere.
In Asia they eat dogs and snakes and make soup out of birds'
nests and shark fins. And there's a tribe in Africa, the Masai,
that drinks a mixture of cow blood and..." Robert grinned,
"...pee pee."
"Pee pee?" Jonah, who had yet to crack a smile, roared with
laughter. Robert remembered his son Eric at this age and how the
mere mention of a bodily function would guarantee an outburst of
hilarity. It was a cheap victory, he thought, but a victory
nonetheless.
"How come you know so much?" Jonah asked after a while.
"I don't. Not really. But I find a lot of things interesting.
Just like you."
"How do you know I find a lot of things interesting?" It was a
question, not a challenge.
Robert looked at the boy and saw everything around them -- the
ruffled sea, the hot blue sky, this very moment by the tide pool
-- residing in the child's luminous, green eyes, eyes that were
refracting light into memories, memories that Jonah would carry
long after Robert was gone. Aching with a loss too deep to name,
Robert turned and started back toward the car.
"Because we're so much alike," he said.
"...I told him there is no Ultrasaurus, they only found some
bones they think is maybe an Ultrasaurus, but they don't even
know yet. But he won't believe me. Colin thinks he knows
everything about dinosaurs, even when I showed him in a book
that he's wrong. He said we don't read well enough to understand
all the big words. Well, I do and I think what he says is
dumb..."
Jonah had been talking nonstop since they left the beach. Robert
concentrated on the road, endlessly weaving among the massive,
splayed fingers of the Santa Lucia Range. It was tiring and
irritating and the mountains seemed to be clawing at the sea.
"Are we almost there yet?" Jonah asked.
"Another, oh, hour or so."
"Is that long?"
"Not to me. But it's probably long for you."
"Why?"
"Time goes more slowly for kids."
"Huh.... How long is an hour?" Jonah mused.
"Hmmm. As long as it takes to watch four cartoons, including
commercials."
Jonah laughed. "You're funny," he said. Then, scrutinizing
Robert as though for the first time, he asked solemnly, "Are you
really my father?"
Robert had met Irene at a downtown bar. He and his friend Tommy
had dropped in for a drink after seeing a play at the Marc
Taper. Robert had been there a few times before; it was a
hangout for L.A. artists, and he liked it because it reminded
him of his Village days when he was a graduate student at NYU.
Had he been thirty, or even forty, he would have instantly
dismissed the place, seen it as a buzzing hive of artsy frauds
flaunting their mediocre talents. Now, having passed fifty, his
major choices behind him, he envied them their youth, their
future, and their natural sense of community.
Tommy had spotted a woman he knew and had gone over to say hello
when Irene slid onto an empty bar stool and introduced herself.
"Hi. I'm Irene," she said pleasantly, then nodded to the
bartender who began making a tequila gimlet. Robert studied her
for a moment. She had large, almond eyes set in a strong,
heart-shaped face, straight, raven-black hair and a perfect
olive complexion. She appeared to be around twenty-five, but
Robert guessed she was in her mid-thirties and had at least one
American Indian somewhere in her family tree. She's one of those
women who will always look ten years younger than she is, he
thought.
"A baby's ass would envy your skin," Robert said.
Irene chortled and shook her head. "It never fails," she said.
"I always know when there's someone around I should meet."
"Ahh," Robert sighed, looking at her fondly. "I'm in trouble
again."
He was.
Three months later Irene came over to Robert's house to tell him
that she was pregnant. He pleaded with her to have an abortion.
"I'm not asking you for anything," she said.
"That's not the point," he argued. "I've just finished bringing
up a kid on weekends and holidays. I don't want to go through it
again, not at my age."
"I'm not asking you for anything," she repeated pointedly.
"Don't you, I dunno, take precautions or something?"
"I see. That's supposed to be my responsibility," she said.
"Goddamnit!" He felt like hitting something. "You know, I've
never been accident-prone before."
"Me neither. Maybe it wasn't an accident," she said.
"Please! It's bad enough. Don't lay any Freudian bullshit on
me."
"Whatever." Irene shrugged. "I only came by because I thought
you should know."
Nothing Robert said -- and he threatened, cajoled and begged --
could convince Irene to terminate the pregnancy. It wasn't a
matter of principle; in fact, she was ardently pro-choice; she
wanted to mother a child, even the child of man with whom she
had slept only twice before he said they weren't destined to be
a couple.
He had ended their liaison four weeks after it began. One
morning over coffee at her loft, he told Irene -- rather
apologetically since he had quickly grown attached to her --
that for him love required an abundant future, time spread out
before it like a variegated buffet. One needed to sample the
possibilities, he said. And, Robert claimed, he didn't have
enough time left to learn what worked and what didn't.
"Are you ill?" Irene had asked, concerned.
"No," he replied. "But I don't think I have time to love anyone
new as fully as I have in the past."
"Oh? And how `fully' have you loved someone in the past?"
He shrugged. "Not fully enough," he answered. "Which is another
reason I don't think it would work between us. I'm just no good
at it."
Irene was relieved that Robert had revealed himself early on.
She had no intention of knocking on a door that would never
open. After suggesting he give some thought to the idea that he
was terrified of women, she let him slip out of her life without
a trace of remorse or grief. As he left her loft, Robert
wondered whether he had made the right decision. By the time he
reached his office, he decided he had.
Irene was prepared to bring up her son on her own (she knew it
was going to be a boy). She wasn't asking for support or for
Robert to take on the obligations of fatherhood. He could have
any relationship he wanted with the child, from joint parenting
to never seeing him at all. Robert chose the latter, but
insisted that he assume financial responsibility for the boy.
Irene was a potter who hovered just above the poverty line.
Robert ran a small company that made informational videos for
doctors. He lived modestly, had few expenses, and had put away
enough to retire even now if he chose.
Irene wasn't sure; she needed a few days to sort out the
conflict between her instinct to remain independent and the wish
to give her son the things she couldn't afford. Two days later
she accepted his proposal. Robert was pleased. He genuinely
wanted to help a woman he liked and a son he would never know.
"Aren't you even curious to see what he's going to be like?" she
asked.
"I wish you both all the best," he replied. He meant it.
Two weeks later, Robert began taking Prozac.
Actually, he did see the boy once before. It was on a Saturday
morning after his weekly half-court basketball game in Roxbury
Park. He was walking toward his car and had entered the parking
lot when Irene, emerging from her battered, antique van,
suddenly popped up in front of him, surprising them both. She
was carrying her year-old son in a sling, papoose-style on her
back. It was too late to avoid her, or, rather, to avoid the
child; they were standing right in front of him.
"Thanks for the money," she said. "It really helps."
"Good," Robert said, helplessly beaming at the fat, flushed,
bundle grinning at him from over his mother's shoulder.
"You can touch him, you know."
"No... I can't do that," he said. He hurried past her, fumbling
for his car keys, afraid he might hyperventilate before reaching
the safety of his car.
Irene called after him. "By the way, his name is Jonah!"
A few years later Irene sent Robert a letter thanking him for
his generosity and telling him that she no longer needed his
support. After a recent gallery exhibit, her work was becoming
somewhat fashionable and she expected that soon she'd be earning
enough to bring up her son by herself. Robert read the letter
again and again over the next few days trying to figure out why
it filled him with so much sorrow.
However, having given up Prozac a year earlier, he decided
against taking it again.
"...Two reasons," she said when she telephoned Robert at his
office a week ago. (It was the first time they had talked since
the morning in the park.) "One, he's my father, and since it
often takes a while for people with brain tumors to die, I'm not
sure how long I'll be away, and I'd like Jonah to finish the
semester. And, two... well..." Her voice faded.
Though Robert knew the second reason, he couldn't bring himself
to ask.
"...And two, he's been asking a lot about his father lately. I
know the pros call them, excuse the expression, `age appropriate
questions,' but that doesn't mean he shouldn't get some answers
from you."
"He doesn't even know me!"
"That's the point."
"And you don't have a problem leaving him with a perfect
stranger?"
"Come to think of it, you are the perfect stranger, aren't you?"
She laughed.
"Irene! He's not going to feel safe with me!"
"Listen. Jonah's... unusual. He's a very adaptable kid. For
chrissake, Robert, it'll only be for two weeks; then I'll come
and get him. And who knows? You could get lucky. My father might
die in two days and I'll be back by the weekend." She sighed.
"Look, this isn't a ploy, okay? If I was gonna lay shit on you,
I would have done it long before now. So, c'mon. I've never
asked you for anything before, and it's not for me, it's for
Jonah."
Robert was unnerved by what was quickly becoming an
inevitability. "What... what happens if he gets attached to me?"
"He'll deal with it."
Robert escaped into silence and Irene waited, allowing him to
agree at his own pace. "Okay," he finally said. "Memorial Day's
coming up. I suppose I could take some time off and we could go
up to Santa Cruz. My son and his family are living there."
"That's right!" she recalled. "Eric. I'd almost forgotten. And
he's married now? A father? That's great."
"And... uh... I'm... obviously... a grandfather."
"Hey! Congratulations!" There wasn't a trace of irony or
derision in her voice. Then, laughing: "My God, Robert, that
makes my six-year-old an uncle!" Robert laughed too.
The following morning Robert and Jonah left for Santa Cruz.
When they pulled into the driveway of the tiny cottage near
Santa Cruz, Eric and Grace were waiting for them. Robert
embraced them both. His son was a lean, muscular,
twenty-seven-year old who taught drama at the university and
raced ten-speeds on the weekends. He was the only person in
Robert's life whom he loved unconditionally. His
daughter-in-law, a sunny, spirited young dancer, also taught at
the University. Until recently, he had liked her without paying
much attention to who she was. He liked her mostly because his
son loved her. But, on a previous visit, after she had put the
baby down, he overheard her whisper to Eric, "I love my life."
Since then, Robert adored her.
Jonah stood behind Robert and was staring at the ground as Eric
walked over and lowered himself onto on his haunches.
"So you're my little brother," he said cheerfully.
Jonah, still looking at the ground, nodded. Eric glanced at his
father, then picked Jonah up.
"Well. Welcome to the family," he said.
For a moment, Jonah looked wary and confused. Then, suddenly, he
threw his arms around Eric's neck and cried without constraint.
It didn't rain that night or the next day, and they decided to
go fishing. Jonah was ecstatic. He had never been deep-sea
fishing and, with a bit of discrete help from Eric, he landed
two of the four salmon caught by their party. By late afternoon
a heavy fog forced most of the day-fishing vessels and private
boats to return to the Monterey docks. Finding no quarry on
shore, it rolled back out to sea searching for stragglers to
envelop and beguile. They drove back to Santa Cruz, their catch
temporarily laid to rest in an ice chest in the rear of the
Jeep.
"They really put up a fight, huh?" Jonah said.
Eric put his arm around him. "They were no match for you,
mista." Robert was touched at how easily and simply the two had
taken to each other. He also found it odd that while he was
still certain the trip was a mistake, he no longer regretted it.
Indeed, he was relieved, even comforted, which baffled him all
the more, since everything he feared was undoubtedly about to
happen, perhaps had already happened.
That night the weather was warm and clear and the family
gathered in the yard for dinner. Robert was charcoaling the
expedition's bounty while Grace fed the baby on her lap. Jonah
was stretched out on a lounge chair next to Eric, utterly
entranced by the brilliant array of stars. Robert wondered how
often, if ever, the boy had seen a night sky like this, a sky so
vast and dazzling, it dared the eyes to turn away -- so unlike
the milky gruel above L.A. where stars kept their distance,
hiding their radiance from the lingering blight of day.
"Are we eating my fish?" Jonah asked. "I mean, you know, one of
the ones I caught."
"Absolutely," Robert reassured him. "I cooked yours first."
Jonah grinned slyly. It reminded Robert of how Eric looked when
he'd made his first catch. It was the look of a boy who has
glimpsed his manhood and is relishing the moment before it fades
into the future.
"Can Katy have some?" Jonah asked, anxious to share his prize
with the world.
"Hmmm, she doesn't have enough teeth to chew," Grace replied.
"But tomorrow I'll put some in the blender for her."
"And can I feed her?"
"Well... sure." she said, surprised. The adults laughed.
"Why's that... funny?" Jonah asked, flustered and hurt. Robert
moaned softly to himself, reached out and caught Jonah's hand,
resisting his effort to withdraw it.
"Jonah, we laughed because what you asked was... so... sweet.
Boys your age don't usually care about feeding babies. We were
surprised, that's all. Nobody was making fun of you, if that's
what you're worried about." Jonah nodded, accepting the
explanation, and Robert let go of his hand.
It's the first time I've touched this child, he thought. A line
of Hart Crane's came to mind, something like, "Your hands in my
hands are deeds."
Just before bedtime, there was a crisis: Jonah couldn't find his
beloved duck. Frantic, wild-eyed, trembling, he ran from room to
room rooting about everywhere, under furniture, behind curtains,
in closets, even yanking off bedcovers and sheets. The adults,
too, spread out and began searching the house. Convinced that he
had left his duck on the boat and that it was gone forever,
Jonah buried his face in a cushion and sobbed inconsolably. His
grief was beyond the reach of Eric's gentle reassurances.
"Jonah," he said, recalling. "I'm sure I remember you holding
your duck at the dinner table. It has to be around somewhere."
It was; Robert found it in the yard under a chair. Jonah pressed
the frayed, dew-damp, one-eyed handful of stuffed fabric to his
face, nuzzling and sniffing it like a she-wolf reuniting with
her lost pup. His relief was as profound as his despair and for
the rest of the evening he smiled radiantly at everyone. Because
he refused to give up the duck long enough to bathe and change
into pajamas, he got into bed suffused with the scent of the sea
and salt and the salmon he'd caught.
They were sharing a large convertible sofa. After whispering to
his duck, Jonah told Robert he was too tired to listen to a
story tonight. He hugged his father, said goodnight, closed his
eyes, and instantly fell asleep.
Robert was bewildered, not by the child's affection, which moved
him deeply, but by Jonah's breezy assumption that Robert usually
told him stories. Robert had never told him a bedtime story; the
only opportunity would have been on the previous night when all
Robert could think of saying was that they were going to have a
terrific time fishing the next day. Then they had gone to sleep
without another word.
The clean, pale light of a full moon filtered through the gauzy
curtains and caressed the boy's face. A sculptor polishing a
masterpiece, Robert thought. Something about Jonah was unusual,
unique, something beyond his intensity and directness and
brooding meditations. Many children, Eric too, as a boy,
possessed these qualities. It was something else, something
Robert hadn't encountered before.
He lay awake rummaging his mind for clues, turning over the
events of the last two days again and again until, at last, he
saw it: Jonah, in the driveway, sobbing in a stranger's arms. He
lives with his pain, Robert marveled. It was his gift, a talent,
a treasure, the source of Jonah's special knowledge of a world
from which Robert, whose misery was fueled by flight, was
barred.
Of course Jonah knew there would be other stories, Robert
thought, and other trips like this one, days of fishing and
nights under the stars with his brother and Grace and the baby.
There would be movies, picnics, ballgames and much more, all
with Robert, the father he had culled from dreams and fantasies
and gathered into his arms for good and forever. Jonah had made
a father of his own.
A surge of wind raised the curtains, allowing the moon to feed
more fully on Jonah's brightened features until, sensing the
light in his sleep, he raised his arm and covered his eyes.
Robert half-hoped the moon would wake him. He urgently needed,
now, this very second, to speak to his son and, as Eric had,
welcome him to the family. But it would have to wait until
morning.
He leaned over and kissed Jonah's forehead, then closed his
eyes, fell asleep and dreamed of Irene.
Peter Meyerson (pteram@tribeca.ios.com)
-----------------------------------------
Peter Meyerson has only recently begun writing fiction and just
completed a novel narrated by a disaffected rat. He previously
worked in book and magazine publishing in New York. He has
written many TV shows, mostly half-hour sitcoms and, a long time
ago, developed and produced _Welcome Back Kotter_. He also
writes plays. Other parts of his past: multiple marriages,
multiple divorces and multiple offspring -- boys ranging in age
from thirty-two to nine.
FYI
=====
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