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InterText Vol. 8, No. 1 / January-February 1998
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Contents
The Worse Part..................................Neal Gordon
Ox-Plum Road....................................Hollis Drew
How Joe Found a Living......................Adam Harrington
The Year Before Sleep.......................Rupert Goodwins
....................................................................
Editor Assistant Editor
Jason Snell Geoff Duncan
jsnell@intertext.com geoff@intertext.com
....................................................................
Submissions Panelists:
Bob Bush, Joe Dudley, Peter Jones, Morten Lauritsen, Rachel
Mathis, Jason Snell
....................................................................
Send correspondence to editors@intertext.com or
intertext@intertext.com
....................................................................
InterText Vol. 8, No. 1. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
electronically every two months. 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 unchanged. Copyright 1998 Jason Snell. All stories
Copyright 1998 by their respective authors. For more information
about InterText, send a message to info@intertext.com. For
submission guidelines, send a message to guidelines@intertext.com.
....................................................................
The Worse Part by Neal Gordon
=================================
....................................................................
When does a relationship cross the line from being in trouble to
being over?
....................................................................
"I'm getting engaged, Rey," Liona says, squeezing lemon onto her
fried perch. She is a model, and her movements are fluid,
without cessation. The effect is that she always seems to be
moving. One movement becomes the next.
"But I thought that -- " I start, but I can't think of what to
say. We are in the diner on Ninth, doing what we always do
afterward. Having lunch. What can I say?
"That I'd wait for you?"
"That you _were_ waiting for me," I say leaning forward and
trying to look at her. I have long since learned the
difficulties in dating a very beautiful woman. Looking her in
the eye is difficult at best.
Liona takes a bite of her fish and says, "Rey, you're sweet, and
I'm glad you've finally made some decisions about Audra, but I'm
not going to be monogamous with you."
I push the mashed potatoes around on my plate. The mashed
potatoes I can look at. Homemade with lumps. The brown gravy is
a mix, too silky not to be. "It doesn't sound like you have
been," I say.
"No," she says and laughs, "but neither have you, if you think
about it. Regardless, I'm not going to marry you, so there's no
point in it." Then she adds, "This fish is delicious."
"Why not? We're good together," I say and manage to take a good
look at her. Like always, I want to stare.
"No, Rey, we're fun together."
"Exactly," I say. She is wearing a baseball cap and T-shirt and
jeans. Her informal dress helps. When she is dressed, I mean
_really_ dressed, it's like standing next to a person in a
spotlight. Everyone sees you, but only as an afterthought.
"No, those aren't the same thing," she says. "We wouldn't be
good together."
"What's the difference?"
"I enjoy you. You enjoy me, we have a fun time, but it's not
good."
"That sounds hypocritical."
"No, it's not. It's the truth. How could I ever trust you?"
The waitress returns and fills our water glasses. She looks at
my untouched plate and says, "Foodzallright?"
"Yes, fine," I say and stick a fork into the potatoes for her
approval. She smiles and walks away. Liona is eating her fish
and smiling at me. Everyone is smiling, dammit, and I am struck
dumb by my own unhappiness.
Liona's teeth are as white as cow's milk, whiter than pearls.
But it is her lips that call attention to her face. They are
very thin and a color that I have never seen on another woman.
The color of a peach, pink-yellow. I cannot look at them closely
without feeling as I did when I first met her: that she is much
too attractive for the likes of me.
"Have I ever lied to you?" I ask.
"Not that I know."
"Well, there you are."
"But you've shown me repeatedly how subversive you are if need
be. We've been seeing each other for nearly two years." She
rolls her eyes. Yes, much too attractive.
"You're saying that because I made a relationship with you while
I was married, you can't trust me when I'm not?"
"Don't twist the words. Eat your food," she says, reaching over
with her fork for a piece of my meatloaf.
I take a bite of the meatloaf. It is still very hot. Great
texture. "Tell me what I can do to fix this."
"This isn't the kind of thing you fix, Rey. It's the kind of
thing you recognize."
"But if there's a problem..."
"There isn't a problem. You're a nice, sweet man, and I'm very
fond of you, but we can't be serious. Eat."
I look down at my full plate. The meatloaf plate here is large
and I love it because I am usually hungry after Liona and I
spend the afternoon together. It's like the sex awakens all of
my other senses. It has always struck me funny that after sex
with her, I invariably find myself having sex with Audra. I
wonder what Audra would say if she knew that Liona was
responsible for her orgasms for the last two years. Best bet is
she wouldn't approve.
I begin to eat my meatloaf, but my heart isn't in it and I
mostly stir things around to make it look like I'm eating, the
way I used to when mom made liver or goulash. I feel the dull
ache in my privates and I can't sit comfortably.
"Sore?" she asks, with a smile.
"Tired, I guess."
"Good," she says and I expect something more but she doesn't say
anything and we eat in silence for a few minutes. I watch as
Liona delicately picks through the fish and then takes each
bite. With her tongue, she searches through the bite for bones,
then gently reaches up, takes them out and sets them down on the
plate.
Finally the waitress comes back to our table and fills the water
glasses. "You no like the meatloaf?" she asks.
"It's fine, I'm just not as hungry as I thought."
"Itsa big meal. Want I should wrap it for later?" she says with
a stray finger. "Maybe you have a late snack?"
"No, its fine, thank you."
"But you hardly eat nothing."
"It's fine, really."
"Suit yourself," she says and shrugs. "You don't want pie then?"
"No."
"Do you have any chocolate?" Liona asks. I look at her plate of
fish bones. Sharp quills as white as her teeth that lie neatly
stacked to one side of the cottage cheese ball with half a
maraschino cherry on top.
"No, but we got Boston Cream."
"That would be great," Liona says and smiles and looks down.
"Skinny thing like you eating Boston Cream." The woman laughs
and turns toward the kitchen.
I know Liona is a little embarrassed because I used to watch her
put on her makeup when we first met. We had a ritual. I'd get
the room and she'd wait by the elevator. We'd ride up together
without looking at each other, then go to the room. We'd make
love and then get into the shower and talk and talk until I
could make love again. Then sex a second time, and another
shower. Then she'd sit on the vanity and fix her makeup and I'd
watch her. Married for seven years and I had no idea how a woman
put on her makeup. Powder and base and then color in her cheeks,
just a little. White shading stuff under her eyes and color over
and then a pencil and then lipstick. It takes about fifteen
minutes, all told.
At first she used to blush because she had never had a man watch
her so closely and you could see the color underneath rise up
like now. The amazing thing is, she doesn't really look any
different after, she just looks more like her. Then we'd go out
and have a meal, just like today. We've eaten in most of the
little places in town a few times, I guess.
When the waitress brings the pie and the check, I am at a loss
for words.
"You aren't going to get all weird on me, are you?" Liona asks,
taking a bite of the pie.
"Weird? No. I don't think so," I say leaning forward and taking
out my wallet.
"Do you understand why I can't keep seeing you?"
"Not at all." I start to count out the money for lunch.
"Because I want to have a real relationship."
I stop with the money and say, "I can have that," trying to look
right at her, but I can't hold it.
"No. You and I couldn't ever be more than what we are now.
Lovers."
"OK, I'll take it," I say, trying to make a joke.
"Rey, try to be serious for one minute. I'm telling you that
this afternoon was the last time."
"Why?"
"Because I have never had to trust you to be faithful, and now
that I would have to trust you, I know I can't."
"You mean that you can't be involved with me because we had an
affair."
"Basically, yes."
"Super. Just brilliant," I say. I am so pissed I can barely put
my wallet away, my hands are shaking so bad.
"Are you going back to Audra?" she says, wiping her mouth with
the paper napkin from her lap. I watch as the last of her
lipstick smears onto the napkin.
"I don't know," I say and she lifts her purse to her lap, opens
it and pulls out her lipstick.
She starts to put it on and says, "I think it would do you good
to be alone awhile." She puts on a deep red that hides her
natural color.
"Well, that I will be," I say.
"Don't worry. I'll call you at the restaurant in a few days and
make sure you're OK," she says. "Give me a kiss, then." She
leans in, but turns her head when I go to kiss her, and so I
only give her a peck on the cheek.
"Super," I say, leaning back in my chair.
"Be nice, Rey. It's not the end of the world." She stands and
turns for the door.
"No. Of course not." I say, closing my eyes and leaning my head
back, but the muscles in my neck stiffen like they are going to
cramp.
Out on the street, I'm only about four blocks from my
restaurant. I should go back and finish the afternoon list, but
I can't do it. My car is there, though, and I know that if I go
get it, I'll end up working. A restaurant is a black hole for
time: you can never work too much. Always something to be done.
It's a beautiful day: fall is here. I decide to hoof it home. I
can always get the car later, or have Carl drive it out to me. I
mean, just because my affair and my marriage are falling apart
doesn't mean that my restaurant is going anywhere, knock on
wood.
I first met Liona two years ago. She walked into the restaurant
one day while Carl and I were finishing the lunch shift. We'd
sent the two line cooks home already and we were bullshitting
and doing the afternoon list and the place was about empty and
it was one of those hellish hot days that we get around here in
August. Absolutely criminal weather, what with the haze and the
bright sun making everything glare like hell.
I was up front, and she walked through the door and the light
shone around her when the door was open. I can remember that
Carl and I both stopped still. Carl elbowed me, and I don't
know, I had had another fight with Audra or something, and the
business was going well and I felt cocky, and I knew that I
didn't have a chance in hell the moment the door closed and I
got a good look at her because she was so stunning. But I wiped
my hands on the white towel looped through my apron's tie-back,
and walked over to where she sat at the counter.
I turned over her water glass and filled it from the pitcher
covered in condensation, and she picked up the glass and drained
the whole thing. "Before you even think about a menu, you need a
stick of gum," I said.
She smiled, her white teeth shining beneath those even thin
lips. "I'm not much of a gum chewer," she said.
"But this gum is guaranteed to transport you directly to
childhood," I said and reached into my pocket. I noticed that it
was easier to speak if I didn't look directly at her, so I
leaned forward onto the counter top with one elbow. "Fruitstripe
Gum." I said and held out the package to her. I looked up into
her blue eyes as she grinned and I had one of those moments.
Religious. Angelic. Something. Carl walked across the restaurant
toward the kitchen behind her, and I remember him waving his
arms in the air and making the football referee's gesture for
"injury on the field."
I watched her hands as she unfolded the wrapper and put the
striped piece of gum in her mouth. "This gum is like fourth
grade," she said and laughed.
"Told you."
"Why are you carrying around Fruitstripe Gum?"
"Too much free time," I said.
"It's awfully sweet,"
"The gum or..."
"The gum," she said and laughed again.
"Don't worry, the flavor only lasts about five minutes."
"Probably just as well," she said. "I came in for lunch."
"I think we can handle that," I said and nodded. The place was
nearly empty.
"What do you recommend?'
"Do you eat meat?"
"It's awfully hot out," she said and looked past me to the
windows.
"Something light?"
"And cool."
"Cold fried chicken and my own special potato salad," I said and
stood up straight.
"Lemonade?"
"Definitely. My name's Rey."
"Sounds perfect, Rey."
"Save room for dessert," I said, picking up a serving plate, and
walking back to the cooler door in the back of the dining room.
When I caught the handle of the cooler, it was cold. "Hey, if
you're hot, come back here for a second," I said.
She looked at me for a moment, then got up and walked over. I
can remember thinking how beautiful she was, and noticing that I
was itching my wedding ring finger with my thumb. As if I was
turning it, but it wasn't there. I don't wear it to work because
it gets too hot over the stoves.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Coolest place around," I said and pulled open the heavy blue
door. On hot days, cool air rushes out of the walk-in cooler
like a cold wind. I flipped on the light, said, "C'mon, you're
letting the cold out," and went in. She followed and pulled the
door closed.
"Heavenly," she said.
It's actually about 40 degrees. "Feels great, doesn't it?"
"Unbelievable."
I reached into the rack and pulled out the long tray of fried
chicken I'd cooked off that morning. "I'm serving these tonight,
but I'll make an exception. Which one do you want?"
She leaned past me, over the tray and pointed. "There," she
said. I could smell her hair she was so close. I could see the
goosebumps on her shoulders. I could see the fine freckles and
short peach fuzz on the back of her neck.
I took the tongs from the side of the rack and put the piece on
the serving plate. "A fine choice. Potato salad's up front," I
said and slid the tray back into the rack.
"My name's Liona," she said, stepping back and sticking out a
thin hand to me.
"I was wondering how I was going to ask," I said, and shook her
hand. It was cold. Her hands are always ice cold.
"I think I could just stand in here all day."
"Not in that dress. You'd catch your death," I said and walked
out of the cooler.
She ate daintily and we chatted all the way through her meal. I
gave her a piece of raspberry cheesecake I'd made the night
before and asked her to go to dinner with me.
It was that easy.
My house is a beautiful old victorian that Audra inherited. When
we got it, you couldn't see across the living room because the
ceiling sagged so badly. We've worked on it for almost our
entire nine years. It's been a long haul.
I step up the stairs of the front porch and open the door. With
my hand still on the knob, I hear it. I stand stock still for a
moment, listening to Audra's groaning gradually building, and I
know from the tone that if I stand here for another five minutes
or so, I will probably hear her make that noise she makes when
she comes.
I step back onto the porch and look up and down the street for
cars. About a block down is the Jensons' green Toyota. No one. I
step back into the house and slam the door hard enough to shake
the walls. The noise overhead stops. I hear moving feet. I drop
my keys on the hall table and walk into the living room. The air
conditioning comes on. The upstairs bathroom door closes.
In a moment, "That you, Rey?" comes down the stairs. It's Carl's
voice.
"Don't come down or I'll kick your fucking ass," I say without
raising my voice. I could use a drink, and walk over to the
liquor cabinet and get a bottle of Jack Daniels from the shelf.
I start to grab a glass and don't.
"Can we talk about this?" comes the voice of my closest friend.
"No. Crawl out the damn window and jump off the back porch. Jump
off the fucking moon," I say and open the bottle and take a deep
drink. My throat gags and I cough, but I take another.
"I'm coming down," Carl says from the top of the stairs.
"Then you'll be dead and I'll be in jail," I say, and I sit down
on the sofa. I take another swig, bite back the edge of the
whiskey, kick off my shoes and put my feet up on the coffee
table. I hear Carl walk back across the upstairs, into the den
and open a window. Then I hear him on the roof. It's about a
twenty-foot drop. He'll probably break a leg if he jumps. I
don't think he will; he's not the type. At some point, I will
have to let him back in the house.
There is almost complete silence now, except for the sound of
Audra crying in the bathroom. This noise is replaced by the
sound of water running into the tub. I try to drink a few inches
of the whiskey, hoping to avoid the entire discussion that I
know will take place as soon as the water drains, but I can't.
Instead, I set the bottle on the table top, reach into my back
pocket and pull out my wallet. I take out the thick wad of
credit cards, remove the rubber band from around them, and start
flipping them over, face down on the coffee table. I start at
the top of the first row, dialing the number on the back.
Mastercard. The water stops running into the bathtub.
"Yes, I need to report my Mastercard is missing," I say to the
silky voiced young woman on the phone. "I seem to have lost my
wallet this morning and I need to have this account stopped
until I locate it," I take another drink, give the woman the
required number, say thank you, hang up and dial the number for
the Visa.
American Express, Diner's, then Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Penney's
and the local store cards. I decide to keep the Sears card and
the gas card. As I finish, the bottle is about a quarter gone,
and I hear the water from the tub gurgling through the old
plumbing. I dial the phone number of the restaurant.
"Mable's," comes the voice of the hostess.
"It's Rey, patch me back to Steve in the kitchen." I hear the
bathroom door open above me.
"Right away, Mr. Colvain." The line clicks. I hear Audra start
down the steps.
"What can I do you for, Rey," comes Steve's voice, our sous
chef. I can hear the sound of the fan in the convection oven
kick on. Cheesecakes must be in.
"I need you to finish the list, I'm not going to get back," I
say and I watch as her feet and then legs and then robe appear
through the railing banister.
"What do you want to run for specials?"
"I can't do this Steve, and I'm not going to be in tomorrow.
Probably won't see Carl either. Can you just cover till tomorrow
night?" Make no mistake, Audra is a beautiful woman in her own
right. Red hair bunched up on the back of her head. I raise a
hand for her to stop. She ignores me and walks into the kitchen.
"You OK, boss?" Steve asks.
"No, as a matter of fact, I'm fucking awful. I'll call tomorrow
sometime."
"I'll cover it."
"OK then," I say and hang up the phone.
Audra walks back into the room with a large glass of Seven-Up.
Her white robe is draped closed around her and she opens the
liquor cabinet and fishes out a glass and a coaster. She sets
the coaster on the coffee table in front of me, puts the glass
on it, and sits down on the other sofa, pulling her feet up
under her, knees together. Just like her.
"Are you planning to get a divorce, then?" I ask.
"I hadn't really thought about it."
"You should have."
"I should have when you opened Mable's."
"Don't make excuses," I say and tip an inch of whiskey into the
glass.
"Pour some of that in here, will you?" she says and holds out
her glass. I fill the top inch. Audra inserts her finger and
half stirs it, then licks her finger clean.
"Did it have to be Carl?" I ask.
"It didn't have to be anyone. I'm sorry it was Carl."
"Is he the only one?"
"Yes."
"Are you lying?"
"No," she says, but I know her well enough that she could be if
she wanted to. Of course, so could I.
I drink the whiskey without choking and set the glass down hard.
Then I repour two inches, and sip at it. "Can you tell me why?"
"Not without making excuses."
"What can you tell me?"
"That I'm lonely."
"So you fucked my best friend? Jesus," I say and lean back on
the couch. The couch is so deep that I am almost lying
horizontally and I rest the glass on my thigh.
"No, I looked for someone who would pay me some mind."
"Fucking is a strange way to make friends," I say to the
ceiling, letting my eyes close.
"Are you mad because I slept with him?"
"Didn't sound like sleeping," I snap, sitting up, and I can feel
the alcohol now, making my head spin. Making me angry.
"Or are you mad because I slept with anyone?"
"Both. But him I have to work with, dammit. I have to look at
him."
"I'm sorry about that," she says, and takes a drink of her
drink.
"Do you love him?" I ask.
"No. No more than you do."
"What does that mean?"
"You spend more time with him than you do with me."
"I run a restaurant with the guy."
"And the restaurant gets all of your attention. Even now you
called it before we spoke."
"Are you trying to blame this on the restaurant?"
"No. This isn't the kind of thing you blame on something, Rey.
It's the kind of thing you recognize."
"Yeah," I say, stunned. I drift, closing my eyes, back to Liona
and already her face is fading.
There is a long silence. I nod.
"I can't do this," Carl calls from upstairs. I spill my drink.
"Shit," I say, standing up fast.
Audra laughs.
I have to piss. "Would you deal with him?" I ask and walk off to
the toilet.
Pissing, I look at the calendar. Today is St. Michael's feast
day, September 30. My mom sent the calendar; I am long-since
lapsed. Audra and I were married Catholic. That was about the
last time I set foot in the church. I had enough from Catholic
school. I can hear Carl climbing back in the window.
Saint Mike was the general in God's army of Angels, I remember
from catechism class. He was made of snow. I guess the intended
effect was that kids would think they were safe in snowstorms,
or something. Or that he was like a blizzard to his enemies,
everywhere at once. All it ever made me think about was how when
you made a snow-man, you made a thing, but when you made a
snow-angel, you made a space: a hole.
I am pretty drunk and I wash my face in the sink, trying to
sober up a bit, but I can't get St. Mike out of my mind. Is what
Liona and I had a real thing or just a space between Audra and
me? I hear the front door close.
When I am back out in the living room, Audra is seated again.
"Is he gone?" I ask.
"Yes."
"Am I supposed to go?" I ask. I start to pick up the credit
cards.
"You don't have to," she says.
I stop what I'm doing. "Do you want me to stay?"
"If you want to stay married."
"We're married," I say, but the words sound strange to me. It's
been a long time since I really thought about being married. All
I've thought about for a long time now is getting divorced. I
sit down next to her.
"I don't want you to stay because you feel obligated," she says
and puts a hand on my knee. She has beautiful hands, I remember.
"Marriage means being obligated," I say, but I can hear how
hollow those words sound.
The house is dead quiet. In a whisper she says, "Then go."
I have wanted her to say those words for almost a year now, to
let me off the hook easy. But when they come, I know that I
don't want them. "No, that's too easy," I say.
"I don't want to fight," she says, pulling back from me.
I push my feet into the cushions on the back of the couch.
"That's not the point. The whole point of marriage is that you
can't just leave," I say, hoping that by saying the words I will
believe them, make them real.
"Yes you can, I'll give you a divorce, if that's what you want,"
she says.
"No, it doesn't matter what I want. That's not the point.
Sometimes being married is bad. But you don't just leave. That's
not being married."
"You shouldn't stay if it's that bad. If you want to leave."
"No, you still have to stay. Right now is the _worse_ part of
`for better or for worse.' This is just the worse part." I say,
trying to convince myself.
"Will there be a better part again?" she says.
"I don't know. I can't say," I answer and just look at her. We
sit a long time in silence. I try to remember the things that
made us get married. If I can only think of them, then maybe we
can have a better part again.
Neal Gordon <nbgordon@i-2000.com>
-----------------------------------
Neal Gordon teaches at the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia and
works with the Working Writer's Group, a long-running critical
group in the Philadelphia area.
Ox-Plum Road by Hollis Drew
===============================
....................................................................
We search for meaning in life?s events; sometimes that search is
fruitless.
....................................................................
One thousand years ago, a holy man traveling to Hangzhou in east
central China surprised his rustic audience with the news that
their local mountain had once stood near his village back in
India. His followers quickly renamed their mountain "The
Mountain That Flew Here." Today vacationing honeymooners visit
this magical mountain to pray for prosperity and the happy
arrival of sons.
My father, Guy Woodleaf, was twelve when he chopped off his twin
brother's finger with an ax. The year was 1930. Guilt,
indignities, betrayal, and brutish circumstances were
commonplace that year. Mrs. Woodleaf sent her twins into the
henhouse early one Sunday morning to kill two chickens for
lunch. Aunt Violet has always believed Shawn only intended it as
a joke: He laid his pinkie upon the bloody chopping block while
two headless chickens flopped around in the yard.
"I dare you!" Shawn said, sneering at Guy.
"I'll do it!" Guy said, then cocked the ax above his head.
A chicken rose and staggered blindly toward the twins. Guy
jumped out of its path while Shawn hooted his youthful contempt.
The chicken wobbled off in a drunken barnyard do-si-do before it
kicked onto its side.
"Chicken!" Shawn chortled. He spit through his teeth like a
boxer.
Guy raised the ax into the air and hesitated.
Shawn shouted, "Double-dog dare!"
_Whack!_
Shawn yelped sharply, grabbed his gushing hand, and dashed
across the porch and inside the house with a torn expression of
alarm and gutsy admiration for his brother's nerve etched across
his face. It was one of the rare moments when anyone would see
Shawn cry.
Guy had been born first. He had emerged thin and unhappy and
vaguely introspective and, just like a dog or bear, rarely
stopped to consider the universe outside the bankrupt impulses
which would one day destroy him. The midwife was busy cleaning
up when Grandmother launched Shawn into the womb of time like a
slick melon seed flicked between her forefinger and thumb. The
family claims he entered the world laughing. Shawn would become
the wild child and, truth be told, his parents' favorite son. In
time, because of his toughness, he loomed as big as the
flesh-eating Minotaur. Their older sisters immediately adored
the new twins and squabbled over who would bathe them and powder
their bottoms and smear Vaseline upon their quaint nubbins.
The twins left school after finishing the eighth grade to farm
with their father in the Mississippi River bottoms. Guy said he
had enjoyed school some while it had lasted. Shawn didn't seem
to really give a damn.
Most of the other young men from the bottoms left school with
them: By then they could read and write, multiply and divide,
and knew enough history to participate in a rural democracy.
They quickly developed a respect for the lush geography that
shaped them, and understood its selectivity much better than
many who finished high school. While marginal crops and
difficult field hands often left them exhausted, the yearning
leg-clench of their women left them feverish and reverential.
They believed in determination and sacrifice, God and family and
country, and that playing by the rules really mattered. Too
emotionally distant to articulate well such deeply rooted
passions, many of those tough plowboys could kill. They would
soon make some damned good soldiers, those big glorious men.
Shawn was the first to tire of farming and joined the Merchant
Marines shortly before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Each
year at Christmas, Aunt Violet corners me between the chocolate
pie and the banana nut fruitcake to whisper a solemn foreboding,
since most Woodleaf men die so violently in their prime. (I
admit to having wondered if my father felt a nasty twitch of
what lay in store for him when the telegram announced Shawn was
lost at sea.)
Then she closes her large doleful eyes, clutches her chest as if
wringing aching hunger from tragic old memories, and repeats our
family's long bloated epiphany:
Shawn died shortly after midnight below decks in an oil tanker
torpedoed five miles off the coast of Texas in March of 1942.
The family had desperately prayed that Shawn had managed to
survive, and several brave plots were invented: Shawn had been a
gifted Sunday-afternoon athlete who loved competition and
bruises and glory; surely such a young bull could easily swim
five miles in a calm sea.
But the War Department had sent the tanker's lone survivor, a
badly scarred young sailor who had stood watch on the bow that
fateful night, to assure the family that Shawn had died quickly
in his sleep. The young seaman had stuttered; and he had spoken
sadly, and with great guilt, about his brave comrades who had
died in their sleep, while he had been blown clear of most of
the sizzling oil. Aunt Violet says she knew from the look in his
one good eye, he wished he had perished with Shawn.
The ship went down quickly. "N-n-no, there w-w-were no
s-s-screams; j-j-j-just the hissing of the s-s-ship as it
s-s-sank b-b-beneath the wa-wa-water."
There was no more doubt about it: Shawn was gone.
Guy, married by then, had not waited on the draft, but had
enlisted only a few days after Pearl Harbor. It was the right
thing to do, just as it was the right time to be magnanimous,
and he had felt only temporary disgust for the giddy town boys
with the bright, coddled looks and smell of a vacation who had
applied for military deferments as gentlemen farmers. After
Pearl Harbor, I imagine he felt the same remote hunger he must
have felt after quitting school; he listened patiently to the
moral outrage of his crippled President, but also clearly
understood with the rapid pulse of a hunter the gut-ripping
realities of war. When the Army trained him as a medic, it was
OK with him; he had often doctored the deep wounds of stubborn
mules and careless black men. Then for several tedious months he
had escorted shell-shocked soldiers to makeshift asylums
throughout the South before he finally received word that he was
headed overseas. That night he called for his young bride, Diane
Rose.
Mother rode in an overcrowded train for eighteen hours to say
goodbye to a husband she barely knew in an obscure hotel room
somewhere in Kansas City. Her world had grown acute since Pearl
Harbor. And, although she had been physically exhausted by her
trip, she had fought back her tears to make their last night
together special, just in case something unthinkable happened to
Guy as it had to Shawn.
Guy had a secret plan. Since the last thing Diane Rose wanted
was a child to raise alone, Guy had secretly snipped off the tip
of his condom. Getting the beautiful Diane Rose pregnant made
urgent sense to this laconic man more accustomed to the swoosh
of a plow than the deep drumbeat of war.
Afterwards, she was outraged to discover Guy's cheap deception
and thrummed her indignation to everyone in the family who would
listen. But on that night my father wasn't moved by her anger
and righteous tears; if a man was about to die in his prime, his
wife should at least have a baby. So, like millions of other
wartime brides, my mother discovered her husband was as capable
of dishonesty as the next horny man.
"If it's a boy, name him Aaron!" he shouted to Diane Rose as his
troop train pulled away from the loading platform early the next
morning, leaving her shivering and anxious and alone in the
bitter teeth of a February snowstorm.
It was almost three years before Guy returned home, exhausted by
terrible visions on Guadalcanal and changed forever by the awful
momentum of those years. While he served overseas, Grandfather
had died from cirrhosis of the liver brought on by a bout with
hepatitis, and Grandmother had moved off the farm and in with
his sister in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Wartime photographs of my father dressed in his sleek, green
Army uniform show a serious young man with dark eyes and heavy
eyebrows. His military hat is cocked back upon the top of his
head. In those old photographs, which I love, he glows virtuous
and ripping and timeless.
He soon found work as an automobile mechanic at the Ford
dealership in Lazich and convinced Diane Rose they needed
another child, my sister, Hanna. We rode with him when he died
violently on a cold Sunday afternoon.
January that year had opened with several warm, vagrant days
that promised much more than the month could deliver, then
turned raw as an ice storm knocked out the electrical power for
three bitter days. Many in bundled Lazich staggered before a
surgical wind that cracked open their tired old bones. My father
had just reluctantly agreed to serve as a pallbearer for a
distant cousin whom he had not seen in years. Since it also
meant hauling all of us over one hundred miles into Mississippi
to sleep in a strange, lumpy bed, he saw little reason to feel
honored. But, still, Minnie was family.
Hanna and I had raged like heathens at the cemetery that
afternoon, and Hanna had almost pitched headlong into Cousin
Minnie's open grave during a game of tag with our young
Mississippi cousins. Our father snapped his fingers at our
mother and pointed us toward our car, but Mother was too busy
snuffing out her grief with a frilly handkerchief to notice. So,
he marched us out behind a cedar tree and thrashed us with his
belt.
When we returned, Cousin Minnie's casket had been lowered into
her grave, and the funeral party was breaking up before the
biting wind. My father tossed a handful of dirt onto the coffin
as an earnest though feeble salute, but the coffin lid drummed
back unkindly. Sullen gravediggers in heavy gray overalls and
gray cowhide gloves tweaked their shovels impatiently in a mound
of waiting dirt. It quickly became obvious he was just in the
way.
As we meekly climbed into the backseat of our car, he mumbled to
our mother, "The only reason God gives us kids is to humble us!"
He rushed us through Memphis and across the turbid Mississippi
River. Shafts of filtered sunlight pierced the afternoon's eerie
grayish-green cast. When we turned onto a familiar narrow county
road that lead toward our home in Lazich, I had regained enough
courage to ask, "Momma, tell me again why it's called Ox-Plum
Road."
Mother smiled. She had been blessed with charm and the gift of
words. And even if she had granted my frequent requests and
retold a story a thousand times, I always wanted to hear it
again:
"Back toward that line of trees over there," she said, sweeping
her hand to the open fields outside the car in a gesture so
subtly defined each of us, even my father, turned our gaze to
the distant line of leafless trees, "Two brothers once farmed
several acres of land, land that had once belonged to their
father, and before that to their father's father, and even his
father before him." She paused to allow the sweep of such
history to etch our souls.
"Being brothers, and naturally competitive, each brother wanted
to make a flamboyant mark to win the hand of a young widow both
brothers loved. The older brother had planted a prized plum
orchard that almost everyone agreed made the best plum jelly in
the county. Like a cider famous for its sweetness, the juice
from these plums was unlike all others. Its crystal amber was
described as something fit for the table of the gods.
"Well, the younger brother couldn't be outdone, and he cherished
a stout ox, which he had lovingly raised from soon after its
birth. Some said he loved this ox almost as much as he loved the
pretty widow -- and maybe even more than his brother loved his
wild plums, if that was possible.
"Each fall, when he showed the ox at the fair, he always brought
home a blue ribbon. Just as his older brother brought home blue
ribbons for his plum jelly.
"Then one day something happened to the ox. Everyone had a
theory. Some said maybe a swarm of bees stung it. Others said it
drank poisoned water. Nobody really knew. But something happened
to the ox, and it broke through a fence and raged throughout the
plum orchard, where it destroyed all of the prized plum trees.
The angry farmer, in a wild rage, then killed his brother's ox
with an ax.
"When confronted by his young brother, the farmer, still reeling
from anger at his losses, boasted of his deed. The two brothers
then cursed the day the other had been born. The younger brother
stormed off after swearing he would soon get revenge.
Late that night the ox's owner slipped through a window in his
brother's cabin and killed his brother in his sleep. Some said
he used the ax that killed his ox. Others said, instead, he
strangled his brother with a strand of rusty wire.
"A mob of angry neighbors didn't wait for a trial, but hanged
the younger brother from a large cottonwood tree that grew along
this road. Then they burned his body and left him hanging for
days as an example to others of how unchecked greed will spoil
their hearts. And that's how this road got its name."
I fell back against the seat and thought about the sweet taste
of wild plum jelly and how awful it would feel to be strangled
with rusty barbed wire.
We were almost home when a large black car blocked our passage.
I watched the other car hog the road. Strong gusts of wind
buffeted it across the center line, then back against the hard
gravel shoulder making it impossible for us to safely pass.
Ox-Plum Road had been built many decades earlier down the
turn-rows at the ends of long cotton fields; it was a dangerous
road, which twisted and galvanized itself into a treacherous
tangle.
My mother gripped the dashboard with her long, red fingernails,
meant to mimic the long, sensuous nails of her idol, Bette
Davis. "He's drunk, Guy!" Mother said, biting her bottom lip in
annoyance while thrusting out her chin.
"Nigger!" my father growled. He jerked impatiently at the knot
on the wide tie I had chosen for him at Christmas.
I cowered against the backseat. Mother had once warned me to
never use the word "nigger" around the "coloreds" because they
could retaliate by calling me a "bastard." (Bastard? --
something, no doubt, ugly, dark, and sticky as a goat turd; she
had secretly whispered the word bastard with her lips pressed
tightly against my ear.)
I kneaded the clay-colored corduroy upholstery of our car with
my fingers and thumb and sniffed cautiously at the odor of my
fear -- a fruitlike dankness akin to that of the sallow dirt
scoured from the depths of Cousin Minnie's grave; I glanced
cautiously at my father's eyes reflected in the rear-view
mirror. His coal black eyes snapped open, then blinked softly
shut, just like a turtle's lazy crescent eyes do as it crunches
the head off a water moccasin.
The absolute tone in his voice was the same one he had used
earlier that morning when he had caught me looking up Aunt
Sarah's dress from my hiding place under the breakfast table.
(The day before I had overheard my father tell some men at the
funeral home that it was a pity that Sarah had never remarried;
she might be his sister-in-law, but he wasn't blind. The woman
had some fine, long legs.) Kapop! Kapop! Kapop! The belt had
slashed with quirky authority across my butt. Don't cry! Don't
cry! my father had warned.
I listened closely to the coupling of the accelerator, gear, and
clutch -- an ingenious mastery of an unforgiving machine. Mother
gripped the strap on the passenger door. Her pinched expression
showed the grim complicity of the rattled. Hanna played with the
wide-eyed doll she had received for Christmas. An annoying bug
when at her best, Hanna was too young to really matter.
My father retreated twenty yards. His jaw had stiffened into a
scowling determination. His red-scrubbed mechanic hands gripped
the steering wheel. Grease in the lines of his knuckles had been
cast into braids of gray lace. His wonderful magic made the
engine roar. Then he smiled at me in the rear-view mirror, a
brief smile full of child-like conspiracy: Watch this one,
Spooner! (Spooner was his pet name for a child who shoveled in
his oatmeal at breakfast.)
The black car up ahead swerved slowly to the right. Father saw
his chance and slammed the gas pedal against the floor. Our old
Ford responded with such a splendid leap my father grunted
eagerly. Then the other car danced back across the center line
just as my father dug a hard left to pass.
Our cars brushed in a soft, clumsy kiss. Time crawled up in one
long, insidious jiggle until I was thrown free. Our car sent up
a great ball of white dust and gravel as it rolled beneath me. I
could have easily reached out and touched the power lines
nearby, but I remembered mother's warning that electricity could
kill me. Then my face plowed into the hard gravel on the
shoulder of the road.
The other driver backed his car to a stop beside me. A tall
woman opened the passenger door and stepped out to tower above
me. She was young, maybe seventeen or eighteen, and she wore a
white letter sweater over a white blouse and black skirt. A gold
letter D was sewn onto her sweater and three gold chevrons
adorned one sleeve. Her long brown legs ended in a pair of
tattered shoes. She wore no socks over her sharp ankles. She
stepped cautiously toward me like a lanky, guarded bird.
I sat up with great effort. Needles of pain stabbed my face. I
tried to stand, but my foot was twisted at a crazy angle and
couldn't bear my weight. The abstracted face of the young woman
stiffened, as if she was studying something quizzical or
something unreal or something mighty troubling. She slapped
herself sharply with both arms and rocked from her waist. She
opened her lips to emit a low, painful moan. Then she pinned her
bottom lip beneath her upper teeth as she moaned. She nodded
slowly and rocked deeply -- like old women in a trance sometimes
do in a fundamentalist church service.
I reached up for her hand. "Help me," I asked. She quit rocking
to pull me to my feet. I stood for a shaky moment, but fell back
into the hard, loose gravel. She then walked toward the hunkered
wreckage of our car. The battered hood dangled from the front of
the car like an exhausted tongue. The front passenger door was
ripped away. Dirt and gravel and strips of metal were pelted up
and down the highway like silver jacks. Steam hassled up from
the wounded radiator in marvelous frosty plumes. The rancid
stench of gasoline hung low in the air. My father's right leg
was pinned under the wreck.
Mother straddled my father's chest, and she reminded me of a
mechanical bird in a carnival booth dipping for a shallow drink
from the rim of a water glass. They seemed caught up in a game
of roughhouse we sometimes played on the living room rug. She
clutched his shirt below the collar. My proud Christmas tie was
twisted behind his neck. "Wake up, Guy!" she shouted. "You've
gotta wake up now."
The young woman who stood above them nudged my father with her
shoe, but, like a cold viper, he didn't move. I glanced through
the open door at the man in the front seat of the big black car.
A faded cotton quilt had slid onto the floor of the car in a
soiled heap. An old guitar was propped up against the front
seat. Its long neck poked into the air, and the driver whumped
it sideways with his arm as he leaned in my direction. "Come
on!" he shouted through her open door. I flinched and glanced
quickly away before he noticed me.
Then the man clumsily shoved open his door and stood with his
elbow wedged against his car. "Come on! Quick!" It was the young
woman and not me he wanted.
"They need help," the woman called. She pronounced it _hep._
"Git yore black ass back in this goddamned car!" he shouted. He
jerked his cupped hand across his chest.
The woman turned away. Her long brown hand floated down to
gently touch Mother's shoulder. Mother looked quizzically up
into the young woman's face. "He won't wake up," Mother said.
She shook Father's shoulders again. "You've gotta wake up, Guy!
You quit teasin' me and wake up!"
The driver lurched toward the young woman. She jerked backward
when he grabbed her sweater and yanked her away from the wreck.
He waved his big brown hand again in the direction of his car.
"Hurry!" But he didn't sound as angry as before.
"Why?" the young woman persisted. She seemed drowsy, half-awake.
He snapped the heel of his fist against her shoulder and spun
her around. "Do it now! Before somebody comes!" But the woman
wouldn't leave.
The man stared past her for a moment deciding. He squatted
beside my father and studied my father's face. My mother looked
at the man but did not speak. The cold wind whipped the man's
dark flannel trousers around his legs. He breathed heavily
through his nostrils, like something cornered after a long chase
over high ground. He looked across his shoulder along Ox-Plum
Road which stretched out toward Lazich. He rubbed his fingers
anxiously across his lips. He stood quickly. I heard his knees
pop. Then he walked past the wreckage of our car and stooped to
lift something that shimmered brightly in the road. Then I saw
it, too. It was the silver-plated pistol my father always
carried in the car when we traveled.
The young woman stared at the pistol in the man's hand. "Whacha
gone do?" the woman asked.
"Move!" he shouted at the woman. I crabbed backward from the
edge of the road; I was really afraid of him then.
He stood for a long moment deciding. He glanced both ways down
the long empty road. The young woman squealed and turned to run
back toward his big black car. She turned and stood beside the
open door with her hand pressed across her mouth. The man cocked
the hammer on the pistol.
I heard it click -- as solid as a lock snapping shut. My heart
froze in my throat. I was young but I knew what my father's
pistol could do: I had watched it shatter glass jugs from my
father's well-placed shots, and, on a crisp autumn morning, drop
a two hundred pound hog to its knees before a steaming washpot.
"Don't!" I shouted at the man.
The man jumped. Maybe he was scared, too. He looked at me.
"Don't, mister," I said. "Don't hurt my momma." I rolled up onto
my hands and knees. The hard gravel on the shoulder of the road
dimpled my palms. He studied me carefully, then looked down at
Mother. I thought he spent a long time thinking about what he
must do. Mother hummed a tune that had been playing all week on
the radio in our living room. The man uncocked the pistol before
he dropped it into his coat pocket.
The man crossed the road in front of me and glanced down at me
as he passed. The gravel crunched under the soles of his
brown-and-white oxford shoes. I looked quickly away and pushed
myself further from his car. When he reached the driver's door,
he slid inside. "Hurry!" he said again to the young woman.
She shoved the guitar back upright and scrambled inside. The
soiled quilt bunched up under her feet. The man slammed his door
shut and hit the starter button roughly with his thumb. The
engine groaned, then fired. The young woman looked over at me
for the last time as the driver shifted into first gear. Then
she closed the door as they sped away.
I cautiously pulled myself through the gravel until I reached
Mother. She still rocked back and forth upon my father's chest,
but with deeper, more agitated movements than she had earlier.
My father's head rolled in my direction. I touched his huge, red
hand. It felt like the chilled rubbery cap of a mushroom. His
eyes were open, but had puddled into cold, black pools.
I heard a soft, thumping noise and turned to watch Hanna crawl
though a crack under the front seat, which had been torn loose
from its tracks. She pulled her Christmas doll behind her. She
waddled over and sat beside me. Her gray bonnet had been twisted
on her head. When I reached to straighten it, she slapped at my
hand.
Hanna and I waited patiently beside our father, while the
shrill, plaintive cries of a killdeer in a nearby field of
cotton stubble arched neatly through the cold, green air. The
bird screeched at us, as if through force it could finally be
heard, then urgently raced away on some new mission.
It seemed as if we waited forever before help came. Then cars
suddenly appeared on both sides of the road. People jabbered and
tripped over themselves to glimpse or poke or caress. Someone in
the crowd announced proudly that he had called the Law.
Strangers stuck their bright red faces before mine and ordered
me not to move with thick husky voices, like they were choking
on milk, while others kept a safe, gawking distance between
themselves and the wreck. Maybe they thought we were contagious,
because they pressed their young children so tightly against
their legs. "It happens just like that!" some old beetle-faced
philosopher barked, loudly snapping her fingers to clarify the
sweet brevity of life. I felt strangely excited and proud, like
our family had done something clever enough to win respect from
these strangers.
A young schoolteacher from Lazich brought Hanna and me from the
cold into the backseat of her car. She couldn't touch us enough
with her tender fingers. Her husband revved his car engine, and
the warm air from the car heater caused my nose to run. The
teacher reached over the front seat and touched my face with a
soft, silk handkerchief. She grimaced when she lifted it away.
"Jesus! Sweet Jesus!" she whispered. The handkerchief was
stained with blood.
"Ouch!"
"Sorry!" she said. "Do you remember me, Aaron? I am Mrs.
Forshey, from school..." She smiled.
I remembered. She taught the older children in fifth grade.
"What's wrong with my daddy?" I asked.
Mrs. Forshey glanced outside the car window toward the wreck.
Then she glanced at her husband. "It'll be OK," she said gently
while patting my hand.
I heard a thin wail skip across the fields like a flat stone
across water, then grow with startling intensity as an ambulance
pulled up beside the wreck. The crowd had reluctantly parted to
let the ambulance through, then tightly pulled back in upon
itself in order to see.
I searched anxiously through the weaving legs of the crowd until
I saw my mother crumpled in the gravel at the edge of the road.
She didn't look real but more like something hastily daubed onto
canvas. Someone had tucked his suit coat around her shoulders to
keep her warm. Several men were working to free my father's
pinned leg, while a fat man in dirty overalls struggled to lift
the car with a crippled jack that slipped down one notch for
every two it gained. He finally motioned for the pressing crowd
to move back.
"I want out," I said to Mrs. Forshey.
"Me, too!" Hanna piped up in sweet, hot mimicry.
Mrs. Forshey shook her head. "We must get you to a doctor,
Aaron," she said. Her admonishment would have worked on the
schoolyard, but not today. I grabbed for the door handle, but
Mrs. Forshey gently held my shoulder. "You can't walk," she
said. I struggled to break free. Hanna burst into tears.
"I'll carry him back," Mr. Forshey said.
"No, let me."
Mrs. Forshey reluctantly placed me at Mother's side. I reached
out and touched her elbow. "Momma?" I asked. She slowly turned
her face in my direction, then back at the men struggling with
the car jack. Unable to resuscitate the old realities and unable
to break herself free, she hummed softly, something playful and
dreamy, but to herself, while the cold evening breeze whistled
musically across the broken shards of our car's windshield with
a faint, mocking lamentation -- like the uncertain resonance of
an aeolian harp.
Mrs. Forshey knelt beside her in the gravel. "Your children are
with us," she said, pointing back over her shoulder to her car.
"We'll take care of them for you, Mrs. Woodleaf." She reached
out to touch one of Mother's hands.
"I don't have children," Mother said with an odd shake of her
head. The words rose from the roots of her throat and
crystallized into feathery white blossoms as they spilled into
the air.
Mrs. Forshey lifted me back up into her arms. I struggled again
but more weakly than before. This time she pulled me close to
her chest. "We're going now," she said firmly. Mother looked
away.
When we reached the car, Mrs. Forshey eased me into the back
seat with Hanna. Hanna pointed a tiny finger at my face.
"Don't!" I said. I touched the torn flesh along my cheek, but
quickly jerked my fingers from the gritty, zippered skin.
The late winter light had seeped deep melon hues across the
evening sky. Although kind adults protected me, I knew my father
was dead. But I was only seven. I was too young to comprehend
how his death, like Shawn's, would soon become another gooey,
wormy marker among the eternal mysteries of the universe.
Hollis Drew <jamesrcox@aol.com>
---------------------------------
Hollis Drew lives in Jackson, Mississippi, where he is gainfully
unemployed. This story is based on the actual events of his
life.
How Joe Found a Living by Adam Harrington
==============================================
....................................................................
Who says they don't tell fairy tales any more? The characters
have just changed, that's all.
....................................................................
1. In which Joe leaves home to find his fortune.
--------------------------------------------------
One light and bright day as excited spring breezes danced around
the new green shoots in the meadow, Joe's mother hooshed Joe out
of the house with the end of her broom.
"You're old enough to find a living now," she said. "Go to the
town and get one."
Joe pulled on his boots and wrapped some bread, some apples and
the money his mother gave him to carry through a rainy day in a
red-striped handkerchief and tied it to the end of a stick. He
slung it over his shoulder and set off for the town.
At the first house near the town he politely knocked on the door
and stepped back with his hands behind him.
"Hello," said the fat man who opened the door. "What can I do
for you?"
"I'm looking for a living, sir," said Joe. "Do you know where I
can find one?"
"Not here, son, at any rate. Good day." He shut the door none
too gently.
Joe picked up his stick and walked to the next house.
"Good morning sir," he called up to a thatcher patting down the
cut straw on a barn roof. "Do you need any help? I'm looking for
a living."
"Good morning to you, my boy. Have you any experience in
thatching?"
"No, but I'm quick to learn."
"So are hundreds of others. I need an experienced thatcher --
I'm competing against all the other thatchers in the area for
speed, quality and price. I can't afford to teach anyone."
"Surely if no one is teaching thatching, when you retire there
will be no more thatchers."
The thatcher shrugged. "That won't be my problem, son. Good luck
finding a living."
Joe walked on to the next house, chewing a sweet grass stem and
whistling.
"Good morning madam," he called over the garden fence to the
woman tending her flower beds.
"Good morning young man," said the woman. "What can I do for
you?"
"Please madam, could you tell me wherever and ever I can find a
living?"
"Ooh, now you're asking," she said. "There's not been any of
those in these parts for years. Why don't you try the center of
town?" So Joe thanked the woman and walked to the center of
town.
He came on a house with a few broken windows and in desperate
need of paint.
"Good afternoon, sir," Joe said as the owner-occupier slowly
opened the door. "I see that your house needs some renovation --
would you be willing to hire me?"
"Only if it costs nothing," said the man, who was wearing a
dirty vest. "This isn't the only house in town that's about to
disintegrate. Nobody has any money to fix such things because
very few of us have jobs. All the family's money is going on the
mortgage. I'm sorry, but we can't afford you."
Joe then went to the town hall and found the director of public
works.
"Good afternoon, sir," said Joe. "Your marketplace is awfully
dirty -- I can clean it for you if you like."
"That's very good of you, young man. Very public-spirited.
There's a mop in that cupboard there."
"How much would you be willing to pay?" said Joe, who wasn't
stupid, even though he wasn't from the ABC1 social group.
"Oh no, we can't pay. We don't get enough taxes anymore because
nobody is buying or selling anything and nobody has a job. You
can use the mop for free, if you want."
"That's not quite the point," said Joe.
"Oh well. The market will have to stay dirty, then."
Joe found a queue leading up to a grand old house near the
market square.
"What's the queue for?" Joe asked a man at the back of the
queue.
"The Duchess lives here -- she's the only one with any money in
these parts and she hires people to do things for her. She takes
in ten people at a time and finds out who of them will do her
work the cheapest. Sometimes she only has to pay a few pennies
for a whole week's work."
"That's silly," said Joe.
"That's life," said the man, looking dejected.
"I'm going to find out why this has happened."
"Well," chorused the queue, "when you find out, come back and
tell us please, 'cause we're in as mighty a high dudgeon about
it as you are."
Joe sat on the steps of the market cross as the moon rose and
wondered where to start. 'The King is bound to know,' thought
Joe. 'He has more advisors than you could shake a stick at.' He
curled up in the doorway to a house and fell asleep.
2. In which Joe meets Blackberry the Squirrel.
------------------------------------------------
In the early morning he set off down the road to the big city.
He had to walk through the Dark Forest, which was so big that he
had to stop in the middle to rest on a tree stump.
From within the tree stump came muffled protests. A squirrel
popped through a door and squeaked up at Joe, "Get off my roof!
Get _off_ my roof! You're cracking the ceiling, you great oaf! I
don't go 'round cracking your ceilings! Oh, look what you've
done! Look _what_ you've done! Deary me, deary _deary_ me."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Squirrel," said Joe, hastily getting off the
tree stump. "I didn't know squirrels lived in tree stumps."
"They don't usually, and the name's not Mr. Squirrel. It's
Blackberry, and I'm a Mrs."
"Oh, I am sorry."
"Never mind. If you go and get some sticks about _this_ long,"
and Blackberry gestured with her two front paws, "I'll shore up
the ceiling. Bring some white mud from the creek and some grass
too. Hurry _hurry!_"
Joe dashed into the woods to get the sticks, mud and grass for
Blackberry. When he returned, she asked him to place the sticks
inside the stump by shoving his hand through the front door
under her directions of "Left a bit, a bit more, stop, right a
bit, in a bit... that's it!"
"Why on earth do you live in a tree stump?" asked Joe.
"Some gray squirrels moved into my old neighborhood. Brought the
tone of the entire tree down -- they're not really the Oak type,
you know. Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are grays,
but honestly, they are lazy, smelly thieves who have no sense of
decency. They should go back where they came from, in my view."
"Where do they come from?"
Blackberry made a _brrrrr_ noise as she thought.
"Not sure exactly. Somewhere down south, I think. What are you
doing in this neck of the woods?"
"I was looking for a living, but to do that I need to find out
why there aren't any left."
"If you humans lived like us animals then you wouldn't have this
problem. None of us ever need to look for a living."
"Yes, but lots of you animals die in gruesomely horrible ways --
disease, starvation, cold, being someone else's dinner..."
"That is a bit of a downer, I must admit. Where do you plan to
go?"
"I thought the King might know why there are no livings left."
"Perhaps, but have you tried the famous Three Economists yet?"
"No. Where are they?"
"They live in the ever-so-middlest of the forest at the top of
an Ivory Tower. They know everything, they say, and Kings and
Chancellors come from all over the world to consult them."
So Joe and Blackberry, who said she needed a holiday, set off by
hill and scented valley, down wide cart tracks, muddy paths and
hidden greenways to the Ivory Tower. The journey went on and on,
rather like most wanderings in fairy tales, and I won't bore you
with it.
3. In which Joe meets the Famous Three Economists.
----------------------------------------------------
At last they came to the tower and climbed the Ivory steps to
the Ivory top where the venerable Three Economists sat reading
authoritative books on the nature of economic strategies in the
incredibly real real world in today's real world.
"Good day, venerable economists," said Joe, "I have a question
for you."
"Let's discuss the fee first," said the first economist, who was
smoking a pipe.
"Surely we can leave such vulgarities until later," said the
second economist, who was bald but had a mustache.
"I really don't think that's the issue," said the third, who
wore gold-rimmed spectacles.
"Let the boy speak," said the first economist.
"I suppose we ought to settle the fee first, actually," said the
second economist.
The third economist tutted and rolled his eyes. "The boy
manifestly has no money."
"Then he ought to go and earn some like the rest of us," said
the first economist.
Joe tried to interject but only got to say "That's..." before
the second economist interrupted.
"Perhaps that's why he's here. We've got no appointments until
three this afternoon -- why not entertain him for a while?"
"I agree wholeheartedly," said the third economist. "Except that
I have an appointment at two."
The economists sat in silence watching Joe expectantly.
Blackberry nudged Joe. "Go on, then," she whispered.
"Ah," started Joe. "I would like to know why ever and ever there
are no livings left."
"Easy-peasy," said the first economist.
"As plain as the nose on your face," said the second economist.
"Its far too complex to explain to a layman," said the third.
"The paucity of economic opportunity is a symptom of the decline
of a fat, exhausted and overpriced economy in which we have
efficiencied ourselves out of a job. Consider: A bank that used
to employ twenty cashiers now only needs two employees and a
cash machine. This makes things cheaper for the consumer until
such a point that the consumer also loses his job through
mechanization. Hence a very streamlined supply side of the
economy and eventually no demand, because everybody has been
streamlined out of the supply side, which is the side offering
all the jobs. My suggestion is that you become a machine, son."
"Nonsense," said the second economist. "We had boom-and-bust
cycles before mechanization. It's part of the natural --
possibly even invigorating -- cycles of life and death, summer
and winter, day and night. It happens and will continue to
happen. Such factors as stock market crashes, unemployment,
deflation of both economy and currency et cetera are but
symptoms of this decline, not the cause. The cause is innate in
the system -- the cause _is_ the system."
"Oh come on now," said the third economist. "The reason is that
we, meaning us the country and us the business community, have
built economic successes on ever-expanding credit. When the
debts are called in, panic ensues because nobody can pay without
calling in their debts. Everybody goes into a frenzy demanding
debts and deferring payment of their own until they go bankrupt;
confidence in the system is lost and investment slows, if not
ceases. No investment, no business, no jobs. Added to this
effect is the effect of allying our economy with Europe, whose
economies run on different lines -- when Germany decides to put
up interest rates to encourage foreign investment to pay for
their internal affairs, so do we, because we have to, to keep
our currency at the tagged rate, benefiting creditors and
damaging debtors until the debtors default and everybody goes
bust."
"Does that answer your question, son?" said the first economist.
"Which of you is right?" asked Joe.
"We all are," said the second economist.
"But you all gave different reasons. You can't all be right."
"Economics is a very complex science, a multi-layered flow of
variable interlocking currents which traverse the whole world,"
said the third economist expansively.
"Well, whose fault is all this?" asked Joe.
"Progress and capitalism," said the first economist.
"Nobody's. It's chaos theory in action," said the second
economist.
"It's the government," said the third economist.
"So how are we to get out of this hole?" asked Joe.
"Move to the far east," said the first economist.
"God only knows. Wait for a change in the weather, I suppose,"
said the second economist.
"Oh, the usual, encourage the growth of business through lower
taxes, firm currency control, a suitable interest rate and
such," said the third economist.
"So it's going to get better, then," said Joe.
"I doubt it," said the first economist. "Our economies are
overloaded galleons just waiting to capsize."
"Oh, it will, given time, but no one will know why or when,"
said the second economist.
"When the government pays back the legislative debt, undoing all
the damage of the last few years and providing a background
amenable to business," said the third economist.
"It's not surprising that the King doesn't have a clue how to
run the economy if he has you lot for advisors," said Joe.
"Harumph," said the first economist. "I am emeritus professor of
fiscal psychology at the University of Bad Znuckensitzen, I'll
have you know. Have you never heard of Europe's Ersatz TV
economist? You know, I'm on Drang nach Osten. It's particularly
popular with the Germans."
"I hold the Piaf memorial chair of Apology Negation at the
University of Sansculotte, and they don't call me Mr. Money, Our
Economist Who's Friendly and Funny for nothing," said the second
economist.
"And I am senior advisor to Herr Doktor Doktor Doktor
Gemeinschaft of Bank Swabia, Switzerland," said the third
economist. "I have a regular program on Radio Ryokaplatz beamed
across Scandinavia and the Baltic. So don't tell me my advice is
no good."
"Thank you," said Joe, who was quite polite even when dealing
with self-important second-raters.
As they descended the ivory steps Blackberry made a face.
"They weren't very useful, were they?" she said.
"Oh, I don't know. At least we know that _nobody_ has a clue
what's going on. Whom do you suggest now?"
"Let's forget about _why_ this has happened. Why not find the
famous Three Personnel Consultants and see what they have got to
say about finding a career?"
"Where do they live?" asked Joe.
"They live behind a huge wooden door with gold leaf lettering
deep in the forest which can only be found by following a narrow
winding six-lane motorway which runs in a huge circle and is
permanently clogged with slowly-shunting traffic, depressed
husbands, hysterical wives and vomiting children."
"Sounds fun," said Joe, unconvinced.
4. In which Joe meets the Famous Three Personnel Consultants.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Joe knocked at the door Blackberry had led him to. On it was
written The Famous Three Personnel Consultants -- Please Knock
and Enter, so Joe did. The Famous Three Personnel Consultants
sat behind a leather-topped desk and all wore glasses and were
bald, including the woman, though she wore a wig.
"Good morning," said the leftmost Consultant. "Did you have a
good journey?"
"Well..." Joe started.
"Good, good," said the middlemost Consultant. "Did you have a
good journey?"
"Not bad..." Joe started.
"Can I take your coat?" said the rightmost and most female
consultant, the one who wore a wig.
"But I'm not wearing..." Joe started.
"Good, good," said the leftmost Consultant. He flipped over a
notepad sheet and chewed the end of his pencil. "What experience
can you bring to this post?"
Joe looked surprised. All three personnel consultants looked at
him in the friendly-yet-expectant manner they had been taught to
use, and which had driven their respective spouses to the verge
of a violent divorce.
"I, er, er," Joe thought hard. "I know how to cut down apple
trees."
There was a long and meaningful pause which was supposed to
elicit further details from the interrogee. Usually this
resulted in a stream of meaningless babble and the Consultants
knew with satisfaction that they had managed to humiliate the
quivering heap of pathetic flesh that lay damp and snickering in
front of them.
"Ye-es," said the rightmost and most female Consultant
lengthily, marking something off slowly and deliberately on her
checksheet. "In what way do you suppose the skills of arboreal
pruning can be _transferred_ to the post of filing clerk and
general dogsbody?" She stressed _transferred_ because this was
an In word and she really desperately wanted to be a fashionable
Personnel Consultant.
"None really," said Joe in a fatal flash of veracity. "Actually,
I came here to..."
"I see from your CV that you only scored 90 percent in your
end-of-term spelling test ten years ago. Why was that?" said the
leftmost Consultant.
Joe drew his brows together. "Um..."
"Don't you think you may be a little overqualified for this
post?" said the middlemost Consultant.
"Too young?" said the leftmost Consultant.
"Too old?" said the middlemost Consultant.
"Too middling?" said the rightmost and most female Consultant.
There was another pregnant-yet-sympathetic pause. Joe was lost.
"No, I don't think so," he said.
They flipped their notepads and marked something down.
"I see you have done a lot of travelling," said the leftmost
Consultant.
"A bit, here and there," said Joe.
"Aha! Do you really think you are ready to settle down now?"
said the rightmost and most female Consultant with a
doubtful-but-questioning set of the nose.
"That's good; it shows _initiative_," said the middlemost
Consultant, using his most favorite word.
"Where do you see yourself in ten years' time?" asked the
rightmost and most female consultant.
"I don't," said Joe firmly. There ensued another nailbitingly
firm-but-approachable pause.
"I see," said the middlemost Consultant. "We have five other
candidates to see today. Why should we choose you?"
"Five thousand actually," said the leftmost Consultant.
"Five million actually," said the rightmost and most female
Consultant.
"All of whom have years and years of exactly the experience we
want, at least two degrees, are under nineteen years old,
willing to work for peanuts and all the hours that God gives.
They have no family, mortgage or social life and are driven only
by the terror of poverty. What can you offer?"
"I've got most of those, except the experience and the two
degrees," said Joe.
"We don't really need the two degrees, actually," admitted the
middlemost Consultant, "but it appears a slightly less random
method of choosing than pinning on a donkey's tail."
"What we really need is someone who has spent twenty years
filing in gray steel cabinets and making five cups of coffee,
two white only, two with sugar only and one with both every half
an hour at 17 minutes past and 13 minutes to the hour except
during lunch and who is under nineteen, and preferably pliant,"
said the leftmost Consultant.
"But that's not possible," said Joe.
"Ah, but you see, there are five million people out there to
choose from. There's bound to be someone." said the rightmost
and most female Consultant.
"Then they're lying," said Joe.
"I think _we_ can tell a liar when we see one, young man," said
the leftmost Consultant in some dudgeon.
"I think you misunderstand our purpose. You think we're here to
_employ_ people don't you?" said the middlemost Consultant.
"Well, aren't you?" said Joe. The Consultants laughed in the
friendly-yet-pedagogical manner they had refined through their
years of overvalued employment.
"Oh, no," said the rightmost and most female Consultant. "We are
concerned with _not_ employing people and when they are
employed, with _not_ sacking them. Out of the many options we
have to pick the best. For instance, we have to glance through
several hundred CVs for each post; the ones with spelling
mistakes are immediately discarded. We don't have enough time to
check any deeper."
"If you don't have time, how come you can check for spelling
mistakes?" said Joe.
"We have time enough for that," snapped the middlemost
Consultant.
"So you are being entirely negative in your search then?" said
Joe.
"Oh, no, no" they chorused. "No, oh no." _Negative_ was a deeply
unfashionable word in personnel circles, like _luck_ and
_mistake_.
"We choose on the basis of instinct," said the leftmost
Consultant. "You can't buck human nature. Our decision is made
within the first three minutes of meeting the applicant."
"What, depending on whether they're pretty or not?" said Joe.
"I wouldn't put it _exactly_ like that," said the rightmost and
most female Consultant. The other Consultants waited politely
for her to say how _exactly_ she would put it, but she didn't.
"So what's the point in the pseudo-science of personnel if it
comes down to basic instincts anyway?"
The Consultants shuffled uncomfortably. "We have to choose
_some_ way. I think we have more refined instincts than most and
understand people better," said the middlemost Consultant.
"I beg to differ there," said Joe. "It's incontrovertible that
some incompetents do get hired and some talented, hard-working
people don't."
"But it's inevitable that some mistakes occur. We don't claim to
be superhuman," said the leftmost Consultant.
"By that logic," said Joe, "air traffic controllers should be
forgiven causing a few aircraft to collide. The difference is
that air traffic control is an applied science with objective
standards, and personnel is a load of baloney. To make matters
worse, it's not merely a matter of a _few_ incompetents in jobs
and a few of the unfortunate talented out of work, it's
thousands, if not millions."
Joe was now warming to his subject. "And those incompetents make
the employment situation worse precisely because they're
incompetent at running an efficient business. It often seems
that the only qualification required to get a high-powered job
is that you should be a self-seeking grasping liar with
connections in the right places who is willing to acquiesce to
any of the notions of your direct boss, however daft or
fraudulent."
The Consultants licked their lips nervously. "I thought _we_
were conducting the interview. You're not keeping to the
commonly accepted standards of interview techniques," said the
rightmost and most female consultant.
"Are you saying, then, that personnel selection procedures are
no better than random?" asked the leftmost Consultant.
"Worse," said Joe. "Because the specifications on which someone
is hired is uniformly arbitrary and _not_ random. For instance
you won't hire young women because they might get pregnant."
"Well, it's _possible__," said the rightmost and most female
Consultant a bit wistfully.
"You won't hire people over 50, presumably because only extreme
youth is fashionable and, by definition, you will only hire
people who can be totally at ease when under scrutiny -- which
indicates that the candidate is good at either job interviews or
lying, and those who do not qualify are permanently
unemployable."
"We have to use _some_ method," said the middlemost Consultant.
"But does it have to be uniformly the same one?"
"We must keep up to date in the incredibly competitive world of
today," said the leftmost Consultant. "In any case, if our
procedures didn't work, nobody would employ us. Businesses
aren't stupid, you know."
"But who checks? How can anyone check? You can't admit to a
mistake because you want to keep your job too and no businessman
is going to admit that all his staff were hired incompetently.
Businesses can thrive without personnel departments, you know."
"But only small ones," said the middlemost Consultant.
"Is there any evidence at all that your recruitment methods are
any better than random methods?"
There was another uncomfortable pause during which all three
coughed nervously.
"Thank you for taking the time to come," said the middlemost
Consultant.
"I'm afraid the post has already been filled," said the
rightmost and most female consultant.
"I'm afraid we will have to postpone recruitment until next
year. Do try again," said the leftmost Consultant.
The Consultants started marking things down on their checksheets
and flipping notes backward and forward.
"That's it," said Blackberry. "Pretty useless, eh?"
Joe got up from the extremely uncomfortable squeaky swivel chair
he had been sitting on.
"That's not so surprising, is it?" said Joe. "After all, it was
people like this who recruited other people like this to run big
companies."
As he left the office, a secretary passed him a note. "From the
Personnel Consultants," she said, chewing her chewing gum
noisily.
It read:
"To find a job you must:
Look for a job tailored to your experience.
Sell yourself.
(Your expectations are too high.
You have no self-confidence.)"
"But I haven't got any experience to tailor anything to!" said
Joe. "And why should I sell myself? Isn't that just smooth
lying? I've never claimed to be a salesman and never wanted a
sales job. My expectation is just to get a job; is that too
high? If I have no self-confidence, isn't that because I can't
even fulfill the basic expectation of getting a job?"
"Don't have conniptions," said Blackberry. "That's what they
want. They want you to feel it's all your fault because then
they won't have to do anything about it. Let's try the three
politicians."
"Politicians?" said Joe. "Oh dear."
5. In which Joe meets the Famous Three Politicians.
-----------------------------------------------------
The Famous Three Politicians lived in a beautiful neo-gothic
palace on the banks of a big river. Joe was directed down dark,
wallpapered corridors, past wooden trifolium ornamentation and
over-luxurious woolen carpets toward a broad double door behind
which could be heard the sound of a convention of axe-murderers.
"Tres William Morris," said Blackberry admiringly from Joe's
pocket as she eyed up the dark green organic design on the
walls.
"Ordah ordah!" shouted someone. The noise continued. "Oh, fer
chrissake shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Please!"
Joe opened the door.
"Did so!" shouted a man in a suit.
"Did not!" shouted another.
"Didididididididididididid!" shouted the first.
"Didndidndidndidndidn't!" shouted the other.
"I'll agree with anyone who'll agree with me," said a third.
"Oh, shut up," said the other two.
"I will not have such language..." started a woman with a blue
rinse from the back of the playpen.
"Go stick it in your ear," said the first.
"Whaddayou want?" asked the second, facing Joe.
"A job, actually," said Joe.
"Well stop whining and go and look for one!" said the first,
cursing as he dropped his briefcase and thousands of stock
certificates slid out.
"See! See!" said the second. "You see what happens when you vote
_his_ lot in!"
"I didn't," said Joe. "I was too young to vote the last time. I
wanted to know why I can't get a job."
"You bloody well get on your bike and look for one," said the
first politician."
"I don't have a bike," said Joe.
"Then buy one."
"I don't have any money, and in any case employers don't just
employ people who turn up on their doorsteps anymore," said Joe.
"Oh piss off, you whining git," said the first politician. "Get
a job and get out of my face."
"I can't," said Joe.
"There's no such thing as can't. You just don't want to. You'd
rather tramp to and fro across the country in an endless and
futile search for a fictional excuse for not getting a job. I
bet my _honorable_ colleague opposite would oblige you with one
of those," he sneered at the second politician. "You people make
me sick. Don't you see?" He waved his hands around in an
encompassing gesture. "We have created a meritocratic paradise.
If you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere."
"Piffle!" said the second politician. "Codswallop! As there is
profit in employment, there has to be profit in unemployment. If
you voted for me, the whole world would join hands and sing in
peaceful harmony..."
"Tripe!" said the first politician. "Nobody believes or trusts
you. The economy would collapse within days of you assuming
power!"
"Only because you and your friends would sabotage it!"
"Doesn't matter _why_, it just would. Who'd trust you with a
penny? You get in and I'm on a plane to Bermuda along with all
my money. And as for you, young man," he looked at Joe, "there
is no such thing as unemployment. There is merely an
unwillingness to match one's self to the requirements of the
marketplace. What do you want me to do? Cry? Piss off. I'm not
interested."
"If we had been in power," said the second, "you wouldn't be in
this state. Blame yourself."
"But..." said Joe.
You're not worth the breath it takes to ignore you," said the
first politician. "Let's face it, you're an irrelevant whining
scrounger with no money, no job, no vote, no prospects, no
connections and no point. Goodbye. And as for you, you corrupt
incompetent..."
"Who exactly are you calling a corrupt incompetent, you
self-satisfied upper class oaf?"
"How _dare_ you..."
Joe turned away from the playpen and made his own way out.
"They say that the incidence of suicide is on the increase," Joe
said to Blackberry.
Blackberry shrugged. "You should have been born a squirrel," she
said.
6. In which the gentle reader decides what happens to Joe.
------------------------------------------------------------
So what did happen to Joe? Well, there are a number of
possibilities. Armed with your knowledge and experience choose
from the following:
**a)** As Joe plodded dejectedly toward the center of town, a
long black car pulled up. A businessman wound down the window
from the back seat.
"Exactly what I've been looking for!" he said.
"Pardon?" said Joe.
"Do you want a job?" said the businessman.
"Well, er, yes," said Joe.
The businessman handed Joe his card. Montague Twistleton-Smythe,
Chartered Odd-Job man to the Astonishingly Rich. "Be at that
address tomorrow morning at nine. Twenty thousand a year.
Company Car. Stock Options. All we need is your brains," he
said.
"Wow," said Joe. "It's like a fairy tale."
"Either that, or you've finally lost it," said Blackberry.
"Otherwise I wouldn't still be here."
**b)** Joe plodded dejectedly back into town to find the dole
office.
"Help," he said to the official there.
The official sighed. "Are you now or have you ever been
unemployed?" he said.
"Yup," said Joe, "and I'm broke."
"Well, find someplace to stay, and we'll pay you."
So Joe found the friends that everyone is supposed to have in
the big city and persuaded them to let him sleep on the floor so
he could get the dole. Then the landlady found out and he was
kicked out, along with the rest of his friends, one of whom had
a job and so could rent another place. Gosh, that was lucky.
Being an unemployed young male, no landlord would offer him a
room, so in the end Joe had to give up and go home, where he
lived for years and years until he had no spirit left and
certainly had nothing to sell to the marketplace.
**c)** Joe plodded dejectedly back into town to find the dole
office.
"Help," he said to the official there.
The official sighed. "Are you now or have you ever been
unemployed?" he said.
"Yup," said Joe, "and I'm broke."
"Well, find a place to stay and we'll pay you."
"I see a fatal flaw in that plan," said Joe.
"Not my problem," said the official.
So Joe slept underneath a bridge until the police hosed his box
into the river. He lived off handouts and whisky, indulging in
the odd bit of theft and buggery until his brain had been
pickled and he smelled so bad and looked so ugly that nobody
gave a tinker's damn about what happened to him. Even the
well-meaning liberals didn't bother wringing their hands in
sympathy.
Mind you, all that whisky and dodgy crack had meant he could now
converse with Blackberry the talking Squirrel. In fact, he saw
her everywhere.
So next time you come across a man looking haggard and unshaven
holding a whisky bottle in one hand tottering underneath a
bridge and slurring "Ay! 'Vyer seen Blackbree, 'vyer, ay?" then
do say hello from me, won't you?
Adam Harrington <adam.harrington@btinternet.com>
--------------------------------------------------
Despite the impression you might get from his story, Adam
Harrington is happily employed as a computer contractor in
England. He has been a biologist, journalist, unemployed bum,
bookie's clerk and unemployed bum again -- in that order -- and
doesn't plan on retiring until his cold dead fingers are pried
from the office doorknob.
The Year Before Sleep by Rupert Goodwins
============================================
....................................................................
Losing yourself in your work is fine, so long as you remember to
come back.
....................................................................
Cecil spun his web lazily, hooking it between branches and
thorns, leaves and flakes of bark. It was early in the morning,
and he was still too cold to shake off the waking sluggishness
in his mind and limbs. He watched sun-slivered color glint
through dewdrops, watched green translucence creep down
shadow-dipped grass stems next to the bramble bush.
Eventually, the sun touched his head, then his back. His body
warmed, the plump abdomen contracting and expanding as energy
pumped through it. Gradually, the world around him grew and the
thirty-two aches in his thirty-two joints melted away. He was
alert now.
The web needed tidying. He tidied it, scuttling across it to a
ragged corner, a sulking gap near the top, a clumsy anchor on a
bramble bud.
That should do. Now, wait.
The dewdrops had gone by midday. Cecil sheltered under a leaf:
it was a clear day and there was rather too much sun. One leg
lightly touched a strand of the web; through it he could hear
his prey distantly moving through the air. Always too distant,
he thought. He wasn't hungry exactly, but he would be in a
couple of days and he didn't want to have to move. Still time to
wait.
The afternoon passed. One small blue fast-flying blur snapped
into the web, but snapped away again almost before Cecil was out
from under the leaf. He scrambled out to inspect the damage;
there was a ragged hole that couldn't be fixed neatly. He did
the best he could, and slunk back again.
Then, just as the sun touched the top of the scrubby trees at
the far end of the clearing, he got a hit. He heard it coming: a
deep, slow buzz that made him remember with pleasure a
particularly succulent catch from weeks ago. With delight, he
noted that the buzz was getting steadily louder. It must be
heading straight for him, he thought, and then it was in the
net. The twig he was on bent slightly with the impact; he was
out in no time, cautiously circling the victim. This one wasn't
going to get away.
It was trying, though. The web bounced and strained, vibrating
with the prey's frantic bursts of motion. Cecil watched it
warily: it didn't seem to be the sort with a sting, and he
couldn't see anything too much like dangerous jaws. He checked
the tension on the web: it was good. He could wait until it
tired itself out a little more.
That took quite a long time, and the air was cooling before he
tried a quick rush over the body. It was still buzzing, but
quietly now, intermittently. One track of web over it, then
another, then another. Then in for the kill: he bit, feeling his
fangs make contact with the body, then through and into it. A
pump of venom. A final twitch. He quickly mummified it with a
single layer of web, then cut it clear of the holding strands
before tumbling it over and over with his hind legs, weaving a
thick, glistening cover. It was bigger than he was even before
he finished.
Satisfied with his work, he dragged it back to his haunt under
the leaf, sticking it carefully to the junction with the twig.
Night was no time to do anything. He'd wait until morning, then
consume his meal and think -- yes, definitely -- about moving to
a new site.
When daylight touched the world about him, everything seemed as
it should be. Things to do formed in his night-slowed mind.
Repair the web, or move. Eat. Yes, eat. He shuddered with slow
waking, and made to move toward the waiting package.
He didn't move. He tried again; his complaining legs made the
right aches, his body bumped away from the twig, but slumped
back down again. His legs strained harder. Something was holding
them fast. There came a colder thought, paralysing him just by
the shapes it made in his head -- wasps! He knew of them; the
memory of them had always been there. Small things, predatory,
always hungry, who flew at night and laid their eggs in living
flesh, leaving it aware and immobile. Was that it?
"No, we're not wasps."
Cecil had enjoyed a long and successful life. He had survived
many of the dangers that could wipe out the toothsome; had
hidden and run, had outwitted most of the rapaciously hungry
animals that would otherwise have added him to their list of
meals consumed. He had seen three seasons, been flooded, baked,
blown away by the wind and nearly frozen. Never, in all this,
had he ever had a thought that was not his own. The shock of it
held him tight as any bright-eyed mouse.
"Come on, Cecil. You're no spider. We're no fly. Look up, look
at yesterday's catch."
He still couldn't separate out these alien voices from his own;
but if a thought said "look up," you should look up. He looked
at the bundle of sticky thread on the twig. It was as he
remembered it.
Except.
Except there was a neat hole halfway up, perfectly round. There
was something dark sticking out of it, and a bright red thread
ran from the hole to the twig. It ended up in a neat loop,
encircling the twig and two of his legs, holding them fast
together. Then it ran under his body. He couldn't see where it
ended.
"That's it. Talk to us, Cecil."
The shock subsided. He thought back at the voices. "What are
you? How are you in me? You are wasps. You will kill me."
"Not wasps. Friends. Cecil, we've been looking for you. We were
worried."
"Friends. Worried. No, no, no. Wasps." Cecil hadn't ever thought
much about what it would be like to be a living host to wasps.
Not something to dwell on. But now he thought about it; it must
be like this. Once the eggs were in your body, their thoughts
must be in your mind. Made sense. Horrid sense. He wished he'd
eaten the fly last night now. A last meal to keep him going a
bit longer.
"Forget the wasps, Cecil!" The voice was louder. Sounded quite
upset.
"...wasps..." he mumbled, trying to see if he could feel where
the eggs were. Everything felt normal. The sun would be on him
soon. Perhaps he'd have the strength to get to the fly then.
"It's not a fly! Oh, for heaven's sake..." There was an
indistinct conversation. He caught the odd phrase: "How much
more damage can we do? He thinks he's an orb spider, for..."
"Well, why not?" Then it went quiet. Cecil waited, for sunlight
or for death.
"Cecil. Cecil Sharpley."
The last word hit him as the sun touched his head. A burst of
light, inside and out.
"Frederic." he said. "Cecil Frederic Sharpley. That's me."
"Well done! Cecil, this is Greerly. We're here to get you..."
But his mind was filled with babble; he was quite unable to tell
what was his, what was the voice. The noises merged, collided,
fell apart. He felt his body vibrate, his legs pumping him up
and down, escape the bird that way, escape the bird that way,
escape...
Inside his mind, a burning. A man came awake. A thirty-seven
year old man, warm, with a wife, with a fascination for
arachnids. A man who made models, a man who wanted to make, who
made, the ultimate field trip. A man who got lost, who forgot
the way out of the field. A man who went to sleep, and woke up
one day not as a man, who slept again.
Now he was awake. Just for a second. Just long enough to feel
the spider body around him and, in the distance, a body that had
been home. He felt the thorax with the legs sprouting from it
bursting through his chest, the distended abdomen where his
stomach was, the mess of fangs and eyes and hair merging with
his warm, smooth, man's face. An excruciating ugliness that the
sunlight could never warm.
Later that afternoon, an ichneumon wasp found the spider. It
settled on the leaf above it, and carefully made its way down,
antennae scanning. But the body was cold and had already started
to decay. Unsuited for the purpose.
There would be others.
The wasp flew away.
Rupert Goodwins <rupertgo@aol.com>
------------------------------------
Large, shambling, ground-dwelling primate. Reclusive, but
habitat thought to be restricted to temperate zones in North
London. Feeding and mating habits: Obscure, and deservedly so.
Evidence for existence may be found in PC Magazine UK, and in a
weekend diary on <http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/>
FYI
=====
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