“So where we going next?” Wolf asks as he piles into the back seat as if this is some sort of holiday excursion.
This time, I have the keys and Jack merely shrugs and waives his hand. “Driver’s choice.” He wasn’t too willing to give up the reigns to me, but there’s no way I would put up with another evening of him grumping about after spending 12 hours at the wheel. For some reason, put a man at the steering wheel and all privileges to stop, get out, and stretch are cut off.
“Massachusetts!” I announce.
“Awww why there!” Jack whinges. The man handles loss of power badly, I’ve noticed.
“What dere?” Wolf pops his head over the seat to ask.
“What’s there is some of the oldest towns and buildings in this country. History my boy! It’s not often I meet things in this country that are older than I am. Besides, as long as we have you playing hookey from school, we may as well see to it that you learn something.”
“Aww c’mon I don’t want to go to moldy old New England!” Jack complains again.
I attempt to dangle a carrot before him. “Boston has a pretty vibrant gay community.”
“Oh!”
“What!! Wait a minute! Is you a fuckin’ fairy?” Judging by Wolf’s reaction, you’d think someone in the front seat had just pulled the pin on a hand grenade.
“Wolf! He’s no more a ‘fairy’ than you are a ‘nigger’! We do not use words like that!”
“I don’t want to be ridin around with no... what I call him iffen I can’t say ‘fairy’?”
“Homosexual!” Jack is red in the face and I know he’d have slapped Wolf straight into the trunk by now had he not spent centuries perfecting his restraint. “The term is ‘homosexual’ or ‘gay’, my dear AFRICAN AMERICAN friend. And for all your upset over finding that out I’d wager that I was probably the first openly gay man you have ever had the pleasure to meet. So ditch the superstition and bigotry! Because from what I can tell so far this fairy, fag, poofter has thus far done a pretty fine job of saving your black ass!!”
“Yeah, not bad for two honkeys, if I must say so.” I add. “Besides, what divides us, what we are on the outside, woman, gay, black, is feeble compared to what connects us underneath.”
Wolf’s eyes get large like two eggs and he makes a silent “oh” with his mouth. Oh here we go, here come the identity politics.
“Now I gets another sermon, huh? How you think I feel knowin here I am just another black man wit not much educatin and ridin’ around bein’ taken care of by you two spooks. Peoples already look at me strange. All my life I seen lil’ old ladies pull they purses away when I sits nearby on da ‘L’, peoples look down cause they afraid to make eye contact wit a black person. They afraid I might be one a dem ANGRY niggers. They afraid I gone hurt them o take dey stuff and all a ma life I hoped I’d be the kinda man ta prove dem wrong. And HERE I IS!! A big ole black man what hasta kill people to stay alive. If dat ain’t whitey’s worse nightmare come true I don’t know what is!”
Jack busts up laughing. Not just sniggering but laughing uncontrollably. “Wolf! Dude! Get over your bad self! We are all, each of us, someone’s worst nightmare in some form or another! Mum here is a liberated woman who goes on a killing rampage when she doesn’t get to eat enough bacon! She could snap a man in half! If I weren’t gay and her son I’d probably be dead by now!”
“Especially with your lip, sonny boy.”
“You dat scarey?” Wolf looks at me in shock.
Not wanting to lose the theater of the moment I shoot him a low look over my shoulder. “I see a diner down the road. You’re gonna drink coffee. I’m gonna eat bacon. Got it?”
“Woooo yes ma’am!” and he lies back down in the back seat.
It’s early yet and through the windows we see the diner holds only a small crowd of regulars and a few loners. Jack and Wolf goof around on the way in.
“So a nigga, a fairy and an ole lady goes walking into this diner in a middle a no place...”
“Can’t wait to hear the punch line on this one.”
“Me neither. Maybe iffen I’se lucky someone in here mistake me for Michael Jordan and we gets our coffee for free.”
“You know, you don’t all look alike!”
“I probably be the first black man these here folks ever done laid eyes on!”
“I don’t know who all you lot are calling the old lady!” I interject.
“ohh m’sorry m’sorry ma’am. Did I say ole lady? Nuh uh! I mean ODD LADY!”
They bust up again.
“I know it’s tough. But you lot could at least attempt to act a wee bit closer to normal! Don’t attract attention!” I know they register a collective complaint as I usher them through the front door.
Immediately through the door it is obvious, however, that stares are going for cheap around here.
“What dey all lookin at?” Wolf mumbles under his breath. “I done took a shower today.”
“Well if its any comfort I think you clean up real nice!” Jack tells him, with an extra effeminate affectation to his voice.
“Don’t be tellin’ me dat!”
Some of the gents seated at the counter glance over their shoulder at us and turn to chat with each other. But, I don’t sense trouble, and the waitress pops over to us with menus soon enough that I can relax.
“Whacha havin’ this mornin’ folks? Can I get ya’s started with 3 coffees?” she asks as she slaps 3 menus down onto the table.
“Yes!” Jack and I chime in unison.
“Coffee?” Wolf wrinkles his nose. “Man I never understood why you folks drink dat shit!”
“Hey, watch the language here.” I admonish him as I seem to have turned into the authority figure, here.
“Well what do you want young man? Hot cocoa?” Jack teases him again.
“Hey!” he brightens up. “I likes cocoa!”
“Cocoa it is! Comin right up!” and the waitress is gone.
Jack isn’t done ribbing yet. “Cocoa! Man how old are you, twelve?”
“I be thirteen nes’ month. Sides, what’s wrong wit cocoa? I likes chocolate! It be good for my complexion!” And he smoothes a hand over his ebony cheek.
“You two are like peas in a pod!”
“I’ve never actually tasted chocolate.” Jack muses.
At this, Wolf is incredulous. “What! Man how you live as long as you have an’ never tasted no chocolate! It against yo religion or somthin? Man dat makes me glad I ain’t white!”
“Wolf, I think what Jack means to say is that he can’t taste chocolate.”
“Right. I’ve stuck it in my mouth and swallowed it, but it doesn’t have a taste for me.”
I try to explain “Most mortal food is just, well, grey. It has no flavor and doesn’t really effect our satiety. You know what I’m talking about, if you think about it. Can you remember how anything besides chocolate tastes? But, each of us has certain foods that we DO taste. And that’s good to know, because that food can hold you over when you need to feed but perhaps can’t.”
“So, for you, obviously, that food is chocolate.” Jack continues.
“What be yours?”
“Mine is bacon!” I offer. “Jack? What’s your food?”
He blushes briefly before offering a sheepish answer. “Well, it’s mustard.”
“Mustard! Eiw! That be nasty! Like that paste they put on hot dogs! Aw man!”
“I know! I know! I realize it’s odd. I once baked Damien a cake for his birthday and frosted the whole thing with mustard! I thought it was quite tasty! But I found out real quick that this was just the wrong thing to do!”
We all die of laughter. Wolf is in tears.
We quiet down once the food comes. Wolf gets pancakes onto which he squirts abundant quantities of chocolate syrup. I get a pile of bacon. Jack’s fried eggs are soon drowning in mustard from the squirt bottle on the table. Nibbling at my bacon I look up at a woman stuffed into a booth nearby. Her belly strains against the table. Her neck is so portly that her head seems to merge with her shoulders. What strikes me the most is how she adoringly focuses upon the breakfast sandwich in front of her. Lovingly the food is cradled in her hands. As she takes bites from it she turns and eyeballs it from every angle, careful not to let a single morsel drop to the plate. Her world, one can see, has shrunk down to the size of her meal.
Wolf spies me watching her and whispers in my ear. “So dat be the normal you want us to look like?”
I just shake my head. “It just disgusts me what mortals sink to sometimes. You’d think that food was the only thing that ever loved her back.”
“Look like it be lovin her back a LOT. Mownin noon an night. m-hm!”
This time when we get back into the car, both Jack and Wolf sit in the back seat. As the road wears on I hear them goofing and chatting. Wolf asks questions, Jack answers – mostly seriously. He explains everything he can about living as a once born as well as answering various questions about the logistics of being gay such as “how do two men actually DO IT? Know whatta mean?”
Just outside of Albany I eyeball the two of them back there and it occurs to me, Jack actually loves this guy, maybe romantically, but definitely deeply. There’s a gift in teaching another one that no thing on Earth can possibly match. This must be a bit of how Zoltan felt in teaching me. That is, if I’m lucky. I wonder too if something about the act of teaching diminished him a little bit. Perhaps soon enough I’ll get to Paris and find out.
Winding into western Massachusetts the road grows narrower and the dark creeps in from all directions. We settle for the night in the Berkshires. I toss Jack the keys and rib him a little. “So wasn’t it more fun to give up control for a day?”
The air has the fragrance of spring’s melt in it. The ground’s icy crunch relents to a goosh under our feet. We all three take deep lung-fulls of air as we look around outside of the inn we’ve found.
Wolf marvels at the stars and stands in the middle of the parking lot, head turned up. “Holy shit man! Lookey all dem stars! Where dey all come from? I ain’t never seen so many like that befo!” After circling around in awe, he throws back his head and lets out a howl befitting of his name.
The spirit of the group is much improved from last night’s tense self-consciousness. But still in the middle of the night I’m awoken by the unmistakable sound of Wolf crying to himself in the corner. I move to get up and go talk to him when my arm is seized. In the dark I hear Jack say “no, mum”.
He’s right. This is for Wolf to heal in himself. No one can take him to his own truth. The best we can do is point the way.
Maybe it’s the exhaustion from all of the driving, but I sleep like a rock, dreamless and deep. Only Jack shaking me wakes me in the morning. “Mum! Wake up!! Wake UP!”
“Are you alright? What’s the matter?”
He rattles a piece of paper around in his hand “Wolf’s gone! He’s gone! Run off! Mum! We can’t just let him do that!”
He races out the door and before I know it, I’m throwing shoes on and running after him, out the inn’s back door, past the covered pool, toward the woodlands that back up onto the property.
“Artie! Artie where are you?” Jack shouts into the trees.
In the fresh spring snow that has fallen overnight I spy a clue and grab Jack’s attention. “Jack! Footprints!” I point to the marks made unmistakably by the sneakers we bought for Artie back in Indiana.
But Jack is too frantic to hear me and continues to yell at the top of his lungs, running into the trees. “Artie! Artie come back! You can’t run off like this! ARTIE!!”
I follow the prints as they lead from the manicured property onto the dirt path through the trees. Normal at first, they spread further and further apart, swishing in the snow as the walking man began to run. I follow the steps further and further into the trees as they mark strides that became a fixed gallop. And then, the two-legged prints become four legged paw prints. I can follow their direction for only a short while before the clutter of leaves on the forest floor obscures the trail.
Standing up, I take a lung full of chill air and let out one call. “Wolf!”
From somewhere in the hills full of trees, deep and directionless, muffled by snow and wood, the lone howl of a wolf returns to my ears. The sound commands a quiet reverence and for a second or two even the wind hushes itself.
Jack, too, has heard the sound. I find him resting against a tree, panting steamy gusts of air in and out of his lungs.
“He’s gone, Jack. The boy isn’t coming back.”
“Why?”
“He has to find his own way. We’ve done all we can for him. Come on, it’s cold out here” But Jack won’t budge and the wiggling chin reveals a nearness of tears so I come up to him and put my arms around him as best I can.
In seconds he’s sobbing. “Why? Why did he have to run away?” He’s not just crying over Wolf, we didn’t know the boy that long. A compounded sorrow wracks his shoulders and pours out of his eyes. It’s an answer to end all answers that he’s seeking. Wolf, with his running off to his own destiny, is the latest abandonment in a parade that I, myself, headed up.
I grab him and make him look at me. “I don’t know, Jack. But from my life I do know that it’s easier to run off alone to mould one’s destiny than to make yourself stay and feel something like love.”
“That makes no fucking sense!” He barks. But, he doesn’t release his hold on my shoulders and continues crying. Now who would be content to settle down in a small Midwestern town and let themselves fade away, I wonder.
We’re silent as we pack up the room, check out, and get on the road eastward to the coast. I spy a roadside greasy spoon that promises to have the kind of bacon and mustard to tide the both of us over. I motion my head towards it, Jack nods, and we pull over for food.
Both of us clutch heavy diner mugs filled with steaming coffee and stare out the window in silence.
I voice the first coherent set of words to enter my mind all morning. “Tell me what happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“After I left, with your father, tell me what happened.”
He sighs and just looks at me for a bit, eyes full of doubt. “You sure you really want to know?”
“Just tell me. If it’s ugly, I deserve to hear it.”
He sighs and shuts his eyes for a long pause to call forth the memory. “Do you remember Mister William? Father’s ‘best boy’?”
“I remember someone running around, always at your father’s elbow. I remember that his company was much preferred to my own, especially in Mr. Fitz’s bed.”
“Yes, well that man was put in charge of my upbringing. It was he who was charged with arranging all tutors and riding lessons. He was charged with meting out all discipline should I falter in my efforts to study or to carry myself as a proper young gentleman. And he was quick with the switch, to be sure. Well, as I got older, about thirteen or so, and began to mature, Mister William began to make me get dressed and undressed in front of him. He claimed that it was to make sure I was putting my waistcoats on in a proper fashion for a young gentleman. But, I was ill at ease about it and tried to resist this supervision when I could.
“Then came the day when he began to touch me, said he wanted to show me a little game that gentlemen played together. It was to be a secret, just he and I could know, no one else. And after he had… touched me… I didn’t care to have anyone else know. I felt absolutely – soiled to the soul. And this went on for a few years. Father was arranging all manner of young ladies for me to meet with an eye to marry and I knew that marrying a woman was a commitment to somehow soiling myself with her for eternity. I couldn’t bear to look at them. I couldn’t bear my own body and it’s utterly tasteless responses and whims.
“About this time, the urge began to arise in me. I didn’t know what it was. It started like a low boiling in my belly, like an angry seed. As it grew there would be times when my whole mind was consumed with the thought of killing and feeding to be free of all torment. One day, Mister William and I were isolated in my chamber. He was… he was touching me, forcing me to arousal, and the maddening burn grew inside me rapidly. I could think of nothing else but consuming my tormenter. I seized upon him and, before I understood what I was doing, I drank his blood.
“The strength and elation I felt after that incident were the most pleasant sensations I’d ever experienced my life to date. I had to have more. That’s all I knew.” He finishes, staring off in his coffee.
“It never gets much better than that first feed.”
“No! no it doesn’t!”
“Look Jack, I don’t know how to put it after this long, but I was wrong to have left you alone.”
“Don’t! Don’t start apologizing!”
“I’m not apologizing. I’m not sorry! I just know that I was doing my best and I can see now that my judgment was wrong. But nothing I did or didn’t do was bigger than the life you were supposed to have, the experiences you were meant to go through and the man you were meant to become.”
He just looks at me in surprise. “Is this another sermon, Minister Eleanor?”
“I’m not bigger than God. You were always god’s child, not mine.”
“I wanted you.”
“Yeah, well, be careful what you wish for. Whatever it was you wanted, I was guaranteed to disappoint.”
“Are you disappointed with me?”
“Why would I be?”
“Because I’m gay, because I’m a once born, because… I don’t know what else.”
“Because you couldn’t defend yourself against a man who wanted to use you cruelly before you were old enough to really understand what was going on? A man you were supposed to trust and obey who abused the situation?”
He pauses and looks at me in shock. “Yeah, maybe that too.”
“That’s not who you are, it’s who you were, and you did the best you could. I’m proud of you. I’m proud of the man you have become. I watched you with Wolf yesterday and I saw the rare man capable of genuine honesty and a nurturing kindness. That spirit came from you, Jack, inside of you. Not from being gay, being an old once born, not from being my son, it was yours all the time. You don’t see it, yet, because you like to push people’s buttons so much, but you have such a big heart.”
He drowns his ham and eggs in mustard and stuffs a few bites in his mouth to hide the fact that he doesn’t have words to articulate whatever nebulous feelings float in his gut. After a few minutes he pauses and says “I think I’m going to go, too.”
“I don’t see why not. It’s your car. Just drop me at the bus station in Amherst.”
“You sure, mum?”
“I’ll be fine! And I’m not leaving you, you know that. You know I’ll be there when you pause to reach for me.”
“Do you have enough money? I mean, to go where you need to go?”
“I have my stash of greenbacks, some gold and some antiques. I’ll do ok. The universe always provides if you don’t get too caught up in how.”
“Huh!”
“Where you think you might head off to?”
“New Orleans!” he says with a big grin.
“A-haa! Time for some much needed fun, I see?”
Imitating a drawl he says “Why yes ma’am!”
Tires on damp pavement hiss as the black Jetta pulls away, dropping me at the Greyhound station. I watch him waive over his shoulder as he points the car back westward. He’d have hated Boston, anyhow.
From the bus window I watch the tree filled hills of western Massachusetts wind their way down to towns, flat stretches, and finally fat highways that pumps vehicles toward the hub city like metal corpuscles feeding an urban heart. Boston in March is still grey and subject to unforgiving winds off the ocean. But, there’s a refreshing familiarity to the aged quality of buildings. Those bricks what have stood their ground for over 200 years reach out to my spirit in recognition. It feels like home, not so much in place but in time. I find the “freedom trail”, a red stripe leading all tourists past both history and locations where they can feel at liberty to spend money, and follow it through the streets that wander and wind with an old world nonsense. I was on the other side of this battle for freedom, sixteen years old and hearing gentlemen guffaw over cards at the audacity of the North American colonies to think they could rule themselves and declare independence. We both spent the next seven years at war with those powers set on keeping us under thumb. They inked the treaty for their own freedom just as I stepped onto a Scottish ship headed for the French coast. I could flatter myself into thinking that this country has been my true home all along, that we are kin of liberty. But I’m not willing to sink with her into the encroaching darkness, which is sure to come if these people don’t push their collective paunches back from the fast food table and wake up. In a small box what’s been banging about in my possession for almost 200 years, there is a gift I must return, if possible, to its original owner. I must return to Paris.
I pause along the trail to touch a building dated “1639”. Here was the riot that started the war and the road for independence. The cars, the sidewalks full of modern folk rushing to and fro in their daily tread mill of life, all fall away. Through the folds of time I hear the shouts of children and see the snowballs filled with stones fly through the tense atmosphere. Whigged, propped up for the king and poorly paid, the string of redcoats looses the thin hold on all composure. Musket balls fly through the air. Smoke rises, feet scatter, screams sound from rebel throats, and a black man lies in a pool of blood. I think of Wolf, his strength of body and wild eyes. I think of the Robert Taylor homes filled to the rim mostly with African Americans all pushed to the margins of poverty and anonymity. Always this country has hinged the measure of its freedom on the life and death of the black people it refuses to own. Here, in what time has turned into a busy urban intersection, the memories will fade but the truth will not be stamped out. A black man died to begin the march toward a freedom what has yet to be found, not for any single citizen. America is a family with too many bastard children begging for a place at the big table. Words comes through the air like a whisper. “But not for long, dear country, not for long.” I feel it in my bones that this darkness of spirit cannot and shall long endure, for across the heartland, as sure as nature turns all things in proper order and good time, dawn is breaking. These dark hours of spirit cannot conceal that it is morning in America.
The centuries fold back their pages over memory, the musing fades as modernity returns. Beep-beep, Honk-honk, excuse me miss, time must march on. I wander through the old North End over to Rowes warf, finding one spot along the edge of a continent to pause, look over the bay and breathe in the briny air. The smell of salt water and fish always makes one think of leaving. Time to go.
I have cash enough for airfare, but it’s time to trade in something I’ve carried around for far too long. I spend a few hours inquiring about Downtown Crossing as to the best place to get a good price for antiques, and when I finally enter the tiny den of gold complete with tiny old man I know I’ve hit the mark.
“Do you buy antique pieces of jewelry?”
“I’ve been known to, whatcha got, missy?” he raises a snowy head and lowers the extra piece attached to his specks.
From my pocket I produce a box so small that I’m amazed, holding it in my hand, how I let the memory weight me down for so long. Raising the tiny container to the light on the counter, I crack it open, revealing two gold bands. “Two antique wedding rings. They were crafted in 1815 by a goldsmith in Baltimore.”
Immediately his face forms a frown and his mouth makes an “oh”.
“Oh my my my! Oh lets look at these!” Under the light he can see the craftsman’s stamp. He takes out a strap to test the stone set in the tinier ring. It’s a bit difficult to watch what I’ve so long treasured get handled and roughed up, but it must prove its worth. After a few minutes he comes back to me, picking up the box. “This is the original box! How did you ever get your hands on these?”
“They’ve been in my family.”
“Honey, are you sure you want to part with these? I can give you a lot of money for them, sure. But, you might regret not having them. These are family treasures!” The concern of the old not willing to part with those things that lend life a permanence and value shines through any of his commercial interests.
I love him for it, I bet we’d have a great time talking over coffee about how things used to be, but I have to keep moving and I can go no further carrying the rock of failure. For no matter how tiny that stone was, we’ve just proven that it was genuine. “I appreciate your concern, really, but it’s time for me to let these go.”
He almost looks a little sad for me despite the enthusiasm for this find. I sign certificates, hand over rings and memories and old ideas about myself once and for all. He puts lots of money in my palms. After giving me the last bill he reaches out to shake my hand and thank me. But the handshake goes long as he shoots a sharp look over the top of his bifocals. “Was your ring wasn’t it?” I give him a quick nod. “Well god bless ya, old woman!” and with a wink he releases me.
I don’t want a return ticket, I’m only going one way. I don’t wish to end up connecting through London, no matter how much cheaper the ticket. In a matter of hours I peak out the window of a 747 bound straight for Paris. As the plane turns up a runway lined with blue lights I watch the landscape speed by. When the great, grey bird lifts its metal feet from the ground I feel instant relief and turn to bid America good-bye.
“Have you ever been to Paris before?” I ask the elderly lady in the seat next to me as our meals arrive.
“Why yes I have! Just once a few years ago I traveled over for my daughter’s wedding. I’d never even been on a plane before in my life!”
“So what takes you over this time? Visiting your daughter?”
“Yes, she just had a baby so I’d like to see my new grandson. And …” she holds herself up with a bit of pride “it’s going to be my 75th birthday in two days! So I wanted to celebrate in style!”
“Well, happy birthday, ma’am!”
I get her talking about her family, her children, her life, mostly because I just want to know. I hear stories about being a little girl during the Great Depression. “We lived out in the country so it wasn’t as bad for us. Dad would find work when he could but Mom would always raise a vegetable garden and we’d can all through the fall, all the tomatos, corn and beans and vegetables. Corn isn’t real acidic so you had to boil it for a long time to can it good. Squash you just had to keep cool and watch for spots, can’t can squash. But there weren’t these big freezers like folks have now so if you wanted to eat it, you had to can it. Then Dad would raise chickens and so we would kill and dress those and sell those. I remember when we got a machine to take all the feathers off, because we had been doing it by hand in hot water, you know, and mom went to use it for the first time. It was just a wheel with all these little suction things on it to pull the feathers. Well, she didn’t have a good enough hold on the chicken and it went flying across the room! Ha ha! They were such good people! It was such a shame that they had to die so young. But they were smokers, you know.” She goes on to talk about her other daughters and through the conversation a disappointment begins to seep through. None of the children stayed with the Catholic faith she tried to give them. One even married a “black” man – a word she spits out as if it were a cuss. She never visits that daughter, won’t hold that grandchild. “What is it?” She asks. “What could it ever become?”
Despite some discomfort, I don’t editorialize on any of her attitudes. It’s more important, with an old one, to simply let them talk and to listen fully. As she goes on it occurs to me that those confines of culture and religion against which I chafed actually provided structure and solace for other women. But I look at her fuzzy little head full of graying hair and just wonder how well she’d do against those chains of gender and religion if she were looking at the prospect of living with them for more than just eighty years or so.
“Tell me, what is your favorite memory?”
“Oh, taking trips with mom and dad! We’d plan where to go, mom would pack the basket full of food, I’d get the car checked out. Dad and I would pool our money and we’d take off for West Virginia or Texas or all over the country.” She trails off telling me about buying goober peas and picking up stinky turtles.
At Charles de Gaulle my little grey lady slips into the receiving crowd and back to her own life. I’m sure she’ll have a grand time going around all of Paris’s great cathedrals. I hoist my old pack onto my back and find an Air France bus into the city. The place has grown so big! Neuilly, which was once a distant town, now abuts the western border of the city. The little round map I remember has fattened and fattened through the years like a tree adding more rings to its girth. The outer arrondissements, with their boulevards netted together by winding streets, confuse me. I keep finding myself back at the Ile de la Cité and trying to make my way to somewhere that feels the same. No spirit here reaches out to recognize me. I go through museums to visit the articles and attitudes of the Paris I remember. I return to the Louvre only to have difficulty finding the entrance. A pyramid in the middle that takes one into the basement is the lobby? Why not just let the door be the door! The whole construction almost outlandish enough that I’d attribute it to Napoleon’s tastes if it weren’t so bloody modern.
My French is a wee bit rusty and antiquated. I lack the vocabulary for many modern items and speak in an older idiom. I collect funny looks just as if I were to land in New York speaking Elizabethan English.
Within a few days I grow accustomed to using the Metro to get about town and decide to brave a journey to the Bastille. So this is where the whole bloody terror started. And now it’s filled with coffee shops, youth lounging about, and a street musician abusing a saxophone for the sake of torturing some Euros out of the tourists. Currently said musician stands poised in front of an older woman who has merely stopped to rest her feet. From the sour look on her face I can tell she will soon toss him some coin simply to leave her in peace.
Over a week of searching, and I have found no sign of Zoltan. The location where once we enjoyed our abode was long ago blasted through by Napoleon to pave the way for a boulevards. I’ve come to this old place in hopes to find some familiarity, to let the narrow streets wind around me and weave me toward some setting where I feel known and connected to a people. I pass through the gates of Place des Vosges and breath a sigh of relief. “Home again.” Modernity and commerce go on, but the air here is pregnant with memory. Parisians take in the early spring’s warm day and enjoy the wide park. This used to be homes. Tradesmen sympathetic to the Revolution bustled their wares and renamed the square. This covered entry still echoes with the wheels of horses and carriages carrying men and knights to tournaments and games in the center. Breathe deep and you feel the time open its pages to all welcoming eyes. Do you remember me, old city? Do you hold a place for an old woman who just wants to come home?
I collapse onto a bench under a tree. Children chase a ball around me, parents call out to them. I reach through the carpet bag I’ve been toting around and pull out a now battered brown package. Maybe Zoltan really meant this for me, knew Agnoletti would refuse the gift and that I would only open the present at that moment when I could truly accept it?
I toy with the box in my hands, looking at the mangled corners, feeling the subtle jostling those contents inside of it. Hope it wasn’t a breakable gift.
“Open it” something whispers in my head.
Should I really do that, though? What if I’m wrong – just deluding myself? What if I’m just rationalizing?
“OPEN IT!” The whisper turns into a chorus.
I turn the box over again and spy a tiny tear in the enclosing paper. This is all the invitation I need and in seconds the wrapper comes flying off. The box inside consists of thin wooden slats that slip apart easily to reveal wood shavings. Fishing through the shavings, my fingers sense a swish of silk in their midst. I grasp and pull gently. A silk bag containing something hard emerges. This must be it. I open the bag to find a simple gold goblet inside.
“A cup?” I have to say out loud. I’ve been carting around a cup since 1808? I shake my head in disgust for a minute. All that trouble over an empty cup! Then, figuring that it’s at least gold and may have some trade value, I hold it back up to look at it more closely. It is gold, for sure, my fingers tell me that much. And while the work on it is fine, it lacks the sort of crafted symmetry of surface that post-medieval pieces possess. It’s old. It’s VERY old! But what is it? I look at the markings stamped into the surface. After some inspection I realize that in Hebrew, maybe Aramaic, it bears the tetragram of God’s name. “Zoltan, what on Earth is this?”
With a click the answer dawns on me. This is a seder cup. This is the seder cup used by his good friend Yeshua in the celebration of his final Passover meal. This stupid box I’ve been carrying around contained the holy grail. The vessel fairly rings in my hand, vibrating its recognition. Somewhere, I hear Jack laughing himself silly.
I want to jump up and run around from a mixture of excitement and panic. Yet I can’t move, frozen in place with horror. When you find yourself in possession of one of history’s most sacred objects of lore, what do you do? How do you explain how this thing came into your possession? The truth would be stranger than any story I could make up. All that I can do with this most esoteric of gifts is to simply, well, sit here and hold it.
I stare into the goblet, mesmerized by the frail bits of spring sunlight refracting around its curves. What is the true legacy of Christianity? What is the imperative of the Christ? After all Yeshua’s calm words and miraculous acts what are we left with, really, but an empty tomb? No sun reigns in the sky as a daily vestige of a god’s protecting its people. The moon no longer pretends to watch over her children each night. No bird takes wing from the ashes and flies again. No single thing survives the gospel as a true symbol rich in meaning. There are flowers and butterflies and items of nature which emulate the resurrection but do fall short under the curse of the flesh. The cross? It’s just a relic of torture; a slap to the face of each true seeker craving something to clutch in an hour of need. Nothing is left for a Christian to grasp but save for an empty black hole in the ground and the myth of an empty cup. “Christ” quantifies no thing. Christ is emptiness.
Observe my reflection in the curving gold. I glimpse Wolf racing through snowy tree-covered hills of North America morphing from man to beast with a grace no one could have taught him. I follow Jack, smiling his charms upon an unsuspecting lover. I see Zoltan fading off to a gentle sleep, handing me a box that through time would convey one last lesson that he was too weak to say in words and knew I was too stubborn and young to hear with my heart.
After all the ages I have survived and fits of emotion I’ve force marched myself through, my present is an empty vessel. Sitting on this little bench, surrounded by the wreckage of discarded packaging I gaze into that void. It is there, in the refracted beauty of empty, that at long last I recognize priceless gift of now.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Nanowrimo - 24
Pennsylvania finally provides a vista with some variety from the flat-scape we’ve been crawling through. I never thought I’d be glad to just see hills again. This is also a state with two major urban areas book-ending a whole lot of backwater. So, when it’s time to stop and get a motel room we tell Wolf to crouch down in the car (with extra orders to stay there no matter how much he wants to get his wild animal self on). I feel horrible asking him to hide, but the lady running the place even gives Jack and I a funny look as we ask for a room. She eyes our left hands with a theatrical suspicion and provides us with the keys to a room containing two single beds. Knowing what I do about mortal sexuality, this attempt at control seems a rather futile gesture. Oh well, if all she has in the world to obey her orders are the crumbs, let her have at it. I’m just glad that the room is at the end of the low, ranch style building. Without much effort we sneak Wolf into the room under the cover of dark.
Even curled up on the cat-scented floor and despite the parched air of the room, I drift off into a dead sleep within minutes. At times I’m dimly aware of the television’s noise. The boys are scouring the channels to see if there is any national news about “vampires”. I’m resting, blissfully lost in the soft blackness of night when something that feels like the ground shaking calls me back.
Against the window I see what looks like a boulder, rocking back and forth and producing a mewing sound. For a few minutes I stare at the shape, wondering if it’s just a branch moving outside? Sleep does funny things with perception. I don’t register that it’s Wolf until I’m right next to it and that familiar musk of sweat and French fries on his skin greets my nose. He’s curled up in a ball, sobbing.
“Artie! What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” I try to put an arm around him to calm him down. He just seems to start crying harder.
The booming male voice of daylight hours twists in his throat and he can only manage to let out a squeal. “I killed my momma, miss. I did that! I couldn’t stop myself and she didn’t even know what hit her. I can’t believe I killed my own momma!” From there his words break down into incoherent pleas for his mother to forgive him.
“Listen, Artie, you didn’t understand what you were doing, yet!”
“I done sent her to hell! She belong to the devil now!”
“NO! Listen to me! We are not creatures in league with Satan! That’s just the same superstition that people used to have about black folks. Saying they had no souls. Or how they used to say that women were all in league with the devil because of Eve’s sin. It’s just some limp piece of mythology called out in the service of a whole lot of fear and ignorance. Listen to me!” I grab his chin and make him look into my eyes. “There is no devil. The only devil in the world is in our own mind. It’s those thoughts and actions that keep us from getting closer to God. There’s no way you could have sent your momma to the devil be cause hell and the devil DO NOT EXIST.”
“You said you is a minister.”
“I am. I’ve been a Unitarian minister for, well, almost one hundred fifty years now. I’ve seen a lot of what folks might call evil in my day. But I don’t see that in you, Artie.”
“But how could I have killed my own momma! What wrong wit me? What kinda monster I become?” his chin threatens to break into sobs again.
“You didn’t kill your momma, Artie. You can’t really kill someone. None of us ever dies. You ended her time in an earthly body that she had been using, but she was never just a body. None of us is. The bigger part of her is soul and that soul lives on. And where her soul lives is a much nicer place that what we experience while in our bodies.”
Even through the dark I still see some doubt in his eyes. But he’s calmed down enough to listen to me. “If the soul place be so nice, why come to earth at all. Why not just stay there?”
“Now there is a month of Sunday talks in that question! I wish I could put it real simple for you. But the soul place lives always inside all people. They come to earth to feel what it’s like to get in touch with it again for the first time. Like falling in love all over again.”
“I don’ gets it.”
Of course not, I realize. He’s really just twelve. The man’s never fallen in love before.
“I know. I know. It took me a long time, too. But, Artie, listen to me. Your momma forgives you and wherever she is, she’s blessing you. The love of a momma can’t be killed.”
“OK, miss.” I’ve managed to calm him down some. But somehow I’m not sure if I’ve really reached him, at least not yet. I’d like to convince him of his own comfort, but he has to earn that within his own mind.
I let him be in his own silence and return to my patch of carpet to sleep, again. From the other bed I hear a soft sound of irregular breathing. Jack is crying.
Even curled up on the cat-scented floor and despite the parched air of the room, I drift off into a dead sleep within minutes. At times I’m dimly aware of the television’s noise. The boys are scouring the channels to see if there is any national news about “vampires”. I’m resting, blissfully lost in the soft blackness of night when something that feels like the ground shaking calls me back.
Against the window I see what looks like a boulder, rocking back and forth and producing a mewing sound. For a few minutes I stare at the shape, wondering if it’s just a branch moving outside? Sleep does funny things with perception. I don’t register that it’s Wolf until I’m right next to it and that familiar musk of sweat and French fries on his skin greets my nose. He’s curled up in a ball, sobbing.
“Artie! What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” I try to put an arm around him to calm him down. He just seems to start crying harder.
The booming male voice of daylight hours twists in his throat and he can only manage to let out a squeal. “I killed my momma, miss. I did that! I couldn’t stop myself and she didn’t even know what hit her. I can’t believe I killed my own momma!” From there his words break down into incoherent pleas for his mother to forgive him.
“Listen, Artie, you didn’t understand what you were doing, yet!”
“I done sent her to hell! She belong to the devil now!”
“NO! Listen to me! We are not creatures in league with Satan! That’s just the same superstition that people used to have about black folks. Saying they had no souls. Or how they used to say that women were all in league with the devil because of Eve’s sin. It’s just some limp piece of mythology called out in the service of a whole lot of fear and ignorance. Listen to me!” I grab his chin and make him look into my eyes. “There is no devil. The only devil in the world is in our own mind. It’s those thoughts and actions that keep us from getting closer to God. There’s no way you could have sent your momma to the devil be cause hell and the devil DO NOT EXIST.”
“You said you is a minister.”
“I am. I’ve been a Unitarian minister for, well, almost one hundred fifty years now. I’ve seen a lot of what folks might call evil in my day. But I don’t see that in you, Artie.”
“But how could I have killed my own momma! What wrong wit me? What kinda monster I become?” his chin threatens to break into sobs again.
“You didn’t kill your momma, Artie. You can’t really kill someone. None of us ever dies. You ended her time in an earthly body that she had been using, but she was never just a body. None of us is. The bigger part of her is soul and that soul lives on. And where her soul lives is a much nicer place that what we experience while in our bodies.”
Even through the dark I still see some doubt in his eyes. But he’s calmed down enough to listen to me. “If the soul place be so nice, why come to earth at all. Why not just stay there?”
“Now there is a month of Sunday talks in that question! I wish I could put it real simple for you. But the soul place lives always inside all people. They come to earth to feel what it’s like to get in touch with it again for the first time. Like falling in love all over again.”
“I don’ gets it.”
Of course not, I realize. He’s really just twelve. The man’s never fallen in love before.
“I know. I know. It took me a long time, too. But, Artie, listen to me. Your momma forgives you and wherever she is, she’s blessing you. The love of a momma can’t be killed.”
“OK, miss.” I’ve managed to calm him down some. But somehow I’m not sure if I’ve really reached him, at least not yet. I’d like to convince him of his own comfort, but he has to earn that within his own mind.
I let him be in his own silence and return to my patch of carpet to sleep, again. From the other bed I hear a soft sound of irregular breathing. Jack is crying.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Nanowrimo - 23
There’s no question about it. Our little mummy and son adventure has just taken a different turn entirely. No trip to Paris for us, just yet. We both exhibit some bad behavior in our dismay over postponing some much needed fun. Eventually our nice hotel room is relinquished, bags get packed and more gold is parted with in order to get a used car.
“A Jetta?” I ask as Jack pulls up to snag Artie and me from our secure location.
“It gets 30 miles to the gallon and only cost three grand, so stuff it, mum!”
“Why he callin you ‘mum’?” Artie asks as he crouches into the back seat. I notice him folding himself to fit in and find it odd. Jetta’s aren’t that small.
“Because I’m his mother, that’s why. We’re both over 200 years old. I’ll explain more later.” He makes some baffled noises as I slam the door shut and pile into the shot gun seat.
Knowing how every toll booth and rest stop along the interstates to be blanketed in security cameras, we wind around on side roads. There’s sure to be a notice out for Artie by now. As it is we order him to lie down in the back.
“Where you takin’ me?” He asks with more curiosity than concern in his voice.
“We don’t know, but this is not a good place for us to be. There’s more eyes here than in a forest full of Indians!” I tell him.
After enough driving on side streets and small streets to be well outside of the city limits, I tell him it’s ok to sit up. Not wanting to continually turn around I commandeer the rear-view mirror, bending it so that I can see his face in it as I talk. “Ok, listen. I’m going to go through some basics for you so that you can separate some of the fact from fiction about what you are. Got it?”
“Yes ‘m.” He says. In the reflection his dark eyes aim at me like two smoldering coals.
“Very well, then. First, the proper term for what we are is “once-born” because we are born once, unlike mortals who must continually reincarnate onto the earthly plain over and over.”
“And who generally end up making the same mistakes over and over” Jack interjects.
“Well, that’s not far from the truth, actually. But we don’t use the term ‘vampire’ as it’s considered a bit, well, prejorative.”
“Prejawhat? What does that mean? What’s wrong with ‘vampire’?”
“It’s the difference between calling someone an ‘African American’ or a ‘nigger’.” Jack interjects again.
“Right, it’s a bit insulting. Shows a lack of understanding.”
“W-w-wonce born?”
“That’s right.”
“I ain’ never goin’ die? Not even if someone hurt me?”
“That’s right. You are the only one who can decide to end your life. If someone hurts you, stabs you or shoots you, your body will heal much more quickly than it can bleed to death.”
“Never die… hm.” He repeats as he looks out the window.
I continue “Also as you may have noticed, going around in the daytime does not kill you. That idea is part of the mythology. The only truth it may have to it is due to the fact that many once borns prefer to do their business at night so as to avoid contact with mortals as much as possible. Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah! Yeah I am.” He jolts his eyes back toward me. “I’se just lookin outside. Never been out of Chicago before.”
“Never? Huh. Well, there’s a whole lot of flat out there to see! Anyhow, back to what I was saying…”
“Look miss,” Artie interrupts, “I is real tired. I’m a lie down and rest for a bit if it’s ok whit chu.”
“Oh, sure, sure that’s fine Artie.”
In a matter of minutes we hear his rhythmic snoring coming from the back seat. Jack is being awfully quiet, keeping his eyes locked on the road. There’s a rancor in the atmosphere I can’t quite sit at peace with.
“I should have been there to help you like that.”
“But you most certainly were not. You had to run off and leave me.”
“I didn’t have any of this to help you with back then. It took decades and decades before I had the simplest tools to help myself. I wasted a lot of years doing everything wrong.”
“Tell me, I heard you tell him yesterday that you had made big mistakes, too. What were your mistakes? Tell me your biggest regrets.”
“Oh where to start. From a very early age I was aware that being a female put me at a great disadvantage in this world. No matter what ideas I had for myself or what thoughts I had in my head, everyone seemed determined to tell me that I had no right to think or act on my own. It was driving me mad before I was even sixteen. That’s when my marriage to your father was arranged. He was the unkindest person I’d ever met. His manner refused to respond to any human kindness I offered. Again, I was a woman and therefore immediately a failure. Part of my realizing that I was a once born came from my desperate desire to prove my own worth and strength to him. He was demanding an heir, yet he refused to lie with me. After I had fed for the first time I possessed a strength he could not resist. I forced him to know me. I guess my first regret was that I had to become this something else, this beast, in order to gain what I wanted.
“I regret having been able to stand up for my child and demand that he be kept close to me. I regret that I listened to his influence over me, telling me that I had nothing to offer my own baby. I left because I really thought I was going to spare you becoming what I was. Every time I thought of my baby through the years, my hope was that he had lived a normal life. I mostly regretted that I had no ability to be a normal mother. Perhaps it was out of missing that normal, nurturing role that I turned to the ministry. But that was only after I was already at least 80 years old.”
“I was lucky enough to find Zoltan once I arrived in Paris, he nurtured me through the early years. All of the things he warned me not to do, I went ahead and did. Probably just like every other once born out there.”
“Mistakes like what, tell me.”
“Oh… I fell in love.”
“Love? You?”
“Yes even my icy old heart can find love! Thank you very much! Maybe it was just the circumstances. I landed in Baltimore around 1810 and the air and space over here were absolutely intoxicating. Pretty soon I met him, Gabriel McClean, God’s prettiest man. He had a wide smile and a kind nature. But mostly he was just real tall and real strong and I’d have followed him anywhere, just like some kind of puppy. He just seemed like, well, a real man. He didn’t need to put me down to prove himself. He didn’t much mind what others thought of him because he just had this air of confidence about himself. He had me swooning at the first smile.”
Jack finally unglues his eyes from the road to glance over at me. “He sounds real nice, I’d have followed him too, I imagine!”
“Oh my yes. Well, he was heading into the frontier, through Indian country, doing his trading and trapping. So, off I went into what was then wilderness. Now it’s just ‘Ohio’! Well, after the Federals cleared the natives out the whole area got more settled. We ended up settling down but I could tell that’s not where Gabriel’s heart was at. He was a man who needed to wander.”
“What happened?”
“What happened was that I fooled myself. A man can be as kind and as generous as peach pie and still have a heart so stony no love can make a dent on it. I thought that man loved me. Hmmm. Nope. He had it in his mind to head out west. Wanted to see the territories where no people were living. He needed to be in those wild places and felt the wringer of age creeping up on him. One day he was just gone. No note. Nothing. His stuff was gone, his horse was gone, he’d up and left.”
“What? Well you must have seen that coming, didn’t you? Even a mortal doesn’t make up his mind that fast.”
“Oh the signs were there when I looked back for them. He’d be reading the stories about the goings on with the western territories out of the papers. He slowly became a little less, well, affectionate. He started looking at me funny. Like he was suspicious.”
“Were you continuing to feed?”
“Yes, so I wasn’t aging. He didn’t quite know what to make of that. I told him that it was my French origins, our skin ages less quickly. Didn’t matter. He was gone. After that, I went on a rage. My urges were completely out of control. I must have killed dozens of people.”
“You? You who up until a week ago was so squeamish about feeding?”
“Well, I personally don’t believe this urge can be so well trusted as I’ve always been taught. I’ve found that it can be manipulated by emotions. It’s not always at hand for our self preservation, it can be greedy, too. Well, I would catch someone, mostly men, alone in a barn or something and I got them in the most awful of ways. I’d let the venom into them but not drink them right away. I’d put just enough in to paralyze them, not enough to really sedate them. Even without being able to move a muscle their eyes still registered fear. I would kill them slowly, relishing the fear. Letting them feel the life draining out of their bodies.”
“Mum, that’s absolutely horrible!”
“And that’s what I regret. I regret loosing control. I don’t trust the urge. I don’t think feeding is always merely life sustaining. Sometimes I think feeding merely keeps alive something horrible that lives inside of me that would be better dead.”
Jack is drives on in silence, but the strained atmosphere has slackened. Noises of dreams, grunts and even animal growls come from the seat behind us as Artie struggles through dreams.
“Tell me about you. Did you ever fall in love, Jack?”
His face melts into a bit of a grin. “Why yes I sure did ma’am. I was in New Orleans in the late nineteenth century. I just loved New Orleans, still do. There are more of us there than just about anywhere else, you know, except maybe Paris. Well, anyhow, I met this boy, Damien, a beautiful octoroon with honey colored skin and lovely green eyes. He had me wrapped around his finger from the start. Same as you I just followed him right home. I just wanted to be with him and do everything with him all the time. It was nice, for a while. Being able to be seen out in just about the only place on Earth where that was allowed was like a breath of fresh air. We could hold hands on the street. Go out for a brunch. Our colors didn’t matter, our gender didn’t matter. What mattered was our love an that’s what folks on the street responded to.”
“Alright, what happened.”
“Damien just got tired of me after a while. He didn’t like the close comfort of being with the same man day after day. And I guess I began to sense that – that growing distance. One day it was just time for me to move on, I guess. I saw him in a café flirting with another man and realized that it didn’t bother me so much at all. Not like it would have years earlier when we started.”
“So you left?”
“I did. I guess I’d have been the bad guy in your story.”
“hm. I think mostly I was jealous of Gabriel’s ability to leave. As a man he could do that, make up the rules as he went along and not worry about anyone else. I always envied men’s social license to do that.”
“Still feel that way?” He turns to look at me.
“Yes”
The air is silent for a while as we pass through yet another small Indiana town.
“I guess this is what we really wanted after all.” He volunteers
“Indeed.” For a second we share about the only honest grin to pass between us thus far.
The growling in the back seat has grown quiet again. Soon Artie wakes up and sits up in the back seat.
“Nice nap?” I ask, looking into the rearview mirror. But, to my surprise where I once saw his dark eyes staring back at me, I now see the top of a chest and an adam’s apple. I turn around and am shocked to find a fully grown, strapping black man sitting in the back seat and busting out of Artie’s clothes. “Artie?”
“Don’t be calling me ‘Artie’ no mo. My name be ‘Wolf’.” Booms the base voice of the man.
“Well!” Jack says “I guess we don’t have to worry about harboring a minor anymore!” and he aims the Jetta for the interstate.
There’s something not right here, something not right about the way he’s transforming. Both Jack and I know this. I’ve never met a once born who was born after the 1950’s and wonder if perhaps the change in human blood that has affected our reaction to drinking may have also changed the entire nature of new ones of us that emerge upon this earth? I can sense that neither of us are sure, but it becomes abundantly clear that this new creature, Wolf, is not like any of the older once borns we have known. And despite his adult stature, the man is still only twelve years old.
We stop off at a shopping mall to get Wolf some clothes that will fit his grown body. Quickly he proves that the juvenile delinquent lives on inside of him. We go to the mens section to pick out clothes for him to wear. But, rather than participate in the activity, Wolf lies on the floor lighting matches and letting them burn down to his fingers before blowing them out. He just lies under the racks of clothing, humming and mumbling to himself with a pile of stubbed out matches growing next to him. We hurriedly buy extra large sweat clothes and drag him out of the store.
We’re almost to Cleveland when we realize that we need gas and so we get off the highway and pick one of the smaller gas stations in the area to fill up. Wolf says he wants to stay in the car. But, once Jack and I are inside the mini-store paying for the gas we hear shrieks from outside. A woman comes rushing in screaming “there’s a wolf in the parking lot!”
I race outside, ignoring the yells of people around me to ‘not go out there’. Sure enough, there is a lone grey wolf growling and leaping around the lot of the gas station. He zeros in on a car full of shrieking children and circles the vehicle, menacing look on his face.
Slowly I come up behind the beast. “Wolf!” I shout.
When he hears my voice he turns around and his ears turn back. But he holds his ground. I advance towards it. I can only call on some greater power within me, that which all once borns share, that which binds us together, I bid that esoteric power to speak through me in that moment. I shut my eyes and feel it rush forward, from an ancient and deep well. As I open my eyes I know that from them comes the ancient glow. I can feel my teeth emerge, this time not to feed but to protect and challenge a misuse of power. From my own throat a deep growl emerges, simply saying “No”.
“No” the voice repeats through me as I continue moving toward the animal. “NO!” I’m within three feet of him. The rest of the world, the squealing children and onlookers shouting “what is she doing, lady get out of there!” fade to nothing in that moment where the old power inhabiting my features locks eyes with the wolf. Its ears back, the beast relents and runs away, tail between its legs.
In a matter of seconds I feel the power recede and dim. My teeth disappear and I see the world around me with fully human eyes again.
I turn around to see astonished faces coming from car and store windows. “Lady, how did you do that?” a man runs up to me asking feverishly.
“Something I learned while living on an Indian Reservation.” I tell him, eager to get out of here.
Jack meets me at the car wearing a panicked look. “He’s gone! You don’t think…”
I raise a hand to cut him off. “Wait” is all I say.
We sit silently in the car for a few minutes. Jack looks nervously at a map, hoping we don’t attract more attention and trying to ignore the people who are talking and pointing over toward our car. Soon enough I see the tall figure of Wolf come loping towards us from behind the gas station. He gets in the car, settling quietly in the back seat as if nothing has just happened.
I grab the rear view mirror and re-adjust it to find his eye level again. “No more tricks, young man.” I say to the dark eyes in the mirror.
“Yes ma’am” is all I hear from the backseat. We head off toward Pennsylvania in silence.
“A Jetta?” I ask as Jack pulls up to snag Artie and me from our secure location.
“It gets 30 miles to the gallon and only cost three grand, so stuff it, mum!”
“Why he callin you ‘mum’?” Artie asks as he crouches into the back seat. I notice him folding himself to fit in and find it odd. Jetta’s aren’t that small.
“Because I’m his mother, that’s why. We’re both over 200 years old. I’ll explain more later.” He makes some baffled noises as I slam the door shut and pile into the shot gun seat.
Knowing how every toll booth and rest stop along the interstates to be blanketed in security cameras, we wind around on side roads. There’s sure to be a notice out for Artie by now. As it is we order him to lie down in the back.
“Where you takin’ me?” He asks with more curiosity than concern in his voice.
“We don’t know, but this is not a good place for us to be. There’s more eyes here than in a forest full of Indians!” I tell him.
After enough driving on side streets and small streets to be well outside of the city limits, I tell him it’s ok to sit up. Not wanting to continually turn around I commandeer the rear-view mirror, bending it so that I can see his face in it as I talk. “Ok, listen. I’m going to go through some basics for you so that you can separate some of the fact from fiction about what you are. Got it?”
“Yes ‘m.” He says. In the reflection his dark eyes aim at me like two smoldering coals.
“Very well, then. First, the proper term for what we are is “once-born” because we are born once, unlike mortals who must continually reincarnate onto the earthly plain over and over.”
“And who generally end up making the same mistakes over and over” Jack interjects.
“Well, that’s not far from the truth, actually. But we don’t use the term ‘vampire’ as it’s considered a bit, well, prejorative.”
“Prejawhat? What does that mean? What’s wrong with ‘vampire’?”
“It’s the difference between calling someone an ‘African American’ or a ‘nigger’.” Jack interjects again.
“Right, it’s a bit insulting. Shows a lack of understanding.”
“W-w-wonce born?”
“That’s right.”
“I ain’ never goin’ die? Not even if someone hurt me?”
“That’s right. You are the only one who can decide to end your life. If someone hurts you, stabs you or shoots you, your body will heal much more quickly than it can bleed to death.”
“Never die… hm.” He repeats as he looks out the window.
I continue “Also as you may have noticed, going around in the daytime does not kill you. That idea is part of the mythology. The only truth it may have to it is due to the fact that many once borns prefer to do their business at night so as to avoid contact with mortals as much as possible. Are you listening to me?”
“Yeah! Yeah I am.” He jolts his eyes back toward me. “I’se just lookin outside. Never been out of Chicago before.”
“Never? Huh. Well, there’s a whole lot of flat out there to see! Anyhow, back to what I was saying…”
“Look miss,” Artie interrupts, “I is real tired. I’m a lie down and rest for a bit if it’s ok whit chu.”
“Oh, sure, sure that’s fine Artie.”
In a matter of minutes we hear his rhythmic snoring coming from the back seat. Jack is being awfully quiet, keeping his eyes locked on the road. There’s a rancor in the atmosphere I can’t quite sit at peace with.
“I should have been there to help you like that.”
“But you most certainly were not. You had to run off and leave me.”
“I didn’t have any of this to help you with back then. It took decades and decades before I had the simplest tools to help myself. I wasted a lot of years doing everything wrong.”
“Tell me, I heard you tell him yesterday that you had made big mistakes, too. What were your mistakes? Tell me your biggest regrets.”
“Oh where to start. From a very early age I was aware that being a female put me at a great disadvantage in this world. No matter what ideas I had for myself or what thoughts I had in my head, everyone seemed determined to tell me that I had no right to think or act on my own. It was driving me mad before I was even sixteen. That’s when my marriage to your father was arranged. He was the unkindest person I’d ever met. His manner refused to respond to any human kindness I offered. Again, I was a woman and therefore immediately a failure. Part of my realizing that I was a once born came from my desperate desire to prove my own worth and strength to him. He was demanding an heir, yet he refused to lie with me. After I had fed for the first time I possessed a strength he could not resist. I forced him to know me. I guess my first regret was that I had to become this something else, this beast, in order to gain what I wanted.
“I regret having been able to stand up for my child and demand that he be kept close to me. I regret that I listened to his influence over me, telling me that I had nothing to offer my own baby. I left because I really thought I was going to spare you becoming what I was. Every time I thought of my baby through the years, my hope was that he had lived a normal life. I mostly regretted that I had no ability to be a normal mother. Perhaps it was out of missing that normal, nurturing role that I turned to the ministry. But that was only after I was already at least 80 years old.”
“I was lucky enough to find Zoltan once I arrived in Paris, he nurtured me through the early years. All of the things he warned me not to do, I went ahead and did. Probably just like every other once born out there.”
“Mistakes like what, tell me.”
“Oh… I fell in love.”
“Love? You?”
“Yes even my icy old heart can find love! Thank you very much! Maybe it was just the circumstances. I landed in Baltimore around 1810 and the air and space over here were absolutely intoxicating. Pretty soon I met him, Gabriel McClean, God’s prettiest man. He had a wide smile and a kind nature. But mostly he was just real tall and real strong and I’d have followed him anywhere, just like some kind of puppy. He just seemed like, well, a real man. He didn’t need to put me down to prove himself. He didn’t much mind what others thought of him because he just had this air of confidence about himself. He had me swooning at the first smile.”
Jack finally unglues his eyes from the road to glance over at me. “He sounds real nice, I’d have followed him too, I imagine!”
“Oh my yes. Well, he was heading into the frontier, through Indian country, doing his trading and trapping. So, off I went into what was then wilderness. Now it’s just ‘Ohio’! Well, after the Federals cleared the natives out the whole area got more settled. We ended up settling down but I could tell that’s not where Gabriel’s heart was at. He was a man who needed to wander.”
“What happened?”
“What happened was that I fooled myself. A man can be as kind and as generous as peach pie and still have a heart so stony no love can make a dent on it. I thought that man loved me. Hmmm. Nope. He had it in his mind to head out west. Wanted to see the territories where no people were living. He needed to be in those wild places and felt the wringer of age creeping up on him. One day he was just gone. No note. Nothing. His stuff was gone, his horse was gone, he’d up and left.”
“What? Well you must have seen that coming, didn’t you? Even a mortal doesn’t make up his mind that fast.”
“Oh the signs were there when I looked back for them. He’d be reading the stories about the goings on with the western territories out of the papers. He slowly became a little less, well, affectionate. He started looking at me funny. Like he was suspicious.”
“Were you continuing to feed?”
“Yes, so I wasn’t aging. He didn’t quite know what to make of that. I told him that it was my French origins, our skin ages less quickly. Didn’t matter. He was gone. After that, I went on a rage. My urges were completely out of control. I must have killed dozens of people.”
“You? You who up until a week ago was so squeamish about feeding?”
“Well, I personally don’t believe this urge can be so well trusted as I’ve always been taught. I’ve found that it can be manipulated by emotions. It’s not always at hand for our self preservation, it can be greedy, too. Well, I would catch someone, mostly men, alone in a barn or something and I got them in the most awful of ways. I’d let the venom into them but not drink them right away. I’d put just enough in to paralyze them, not enough to really sedate them. Even without being able to move a muscle their eyes still registered fear. I would kill them slowly, relishing the fear. Letting them feel the life draining out of their bodies.”
“Mum, that’s absolutely horrible!”
“And that’s what I regret. I regret loosing control. I don’t trust the urge. I don’t think feeding is always merely life sustaining. Sometimes I think feeding merely keeps alive something horrible that lives inside of me that would be better dead.”
Jack is drives on in silence, but the strained atmosphere has slackened. Noises of dreams, grunts and even animal growls come from the seat behind us as Artie struggles through dreams.
“Tell me about you. Did you ever fall in love, Jack?”
His face melts into a bit of a grin. “Why yes I sure did ma’am. I was in New Orleans in the late nineteenth century. I just loved New Orleans, still do. There are more of us there than just about anywhere else, you know, except maybe Paris. Well, anyhow, I met this boy, Damien, a beautiful octoroon with honey colored skin and lovely green eyes. He had me wrapped around his finger from the start. Same as you I just followed him right home. I just wanted to be with him and do everything with him all the time. It was nice, for a while. Being able to be seen out in just about the only place on Earth where that was allowed was like a breath of fresh air. We could hold hands on the street. Go out for a brunch. Our colors didn’t matter, our gender didn’t matter. What mattered was our love an that’s what folks on the street responded to.”
“Alright, what happened.”
“Damien just got tired of me after a while. He didn’t like the close comfort of being with the same man day after day. And I guess I began to sense that – that growing distance. One day it was just time for me to move on, I guess. I saw him in a café flirting with another man and realized that it didn’t bother me so much at all. Not like it would have years earlier when we started.”
“So you left?”
“I did. I guess I’d have been the bad guy in your story.”
“hm. I think mostly I was jealous of Gabriel’s ability to leave. As a man he could do that, make up the rules as he went along and not worry about anyone else. I always envied men’s social license to do that.”
“Still feel that way?” He turns to look at me.
“Yes”
The air is silent for a while as we pass through yet another small Indiana town.
“I guess this is what we really wanted after all.” He volunteers
“Indeed.” For a second we share about the only honest grin to pass between us thus far.
The growling in the back seat has grown quiet again. Soon Artie wakes up and sits up in the back seat.
“Nice nap?” I ask, looking into the rearview mirror. But, to my surprise where I once saw his dark eyes staring back at me, I now see the top of a chest and an adam’s apple. I turn around and am shocked to find a fully grown, strapping black man sitting in the back seat and busting out of Artie’s clothes. “Artie?”
“Don’t be calling me ‘Artie’ no mo. My name be ‘Wolf’.” Booms the base voice of the man.
“Well!” Jack says “I guess we don’t have to worry about harboring a minor anymore!” and he aims the Jetta for the interstate.
There’s something not right here, something not right about the way he’s transforming. Both Jack and I know this. I’ve never met a once born who was born after the 1950’s and wonder if perhaps the change in human blood that has affected our reaction to drinking may have also changed the entire nature of new ones of us that emerge upon this earth? I can sense that neither of us are sure, but it becomes abundantly clear that this new creature, Wolf, is not like any of the older once borns we have known. And despite his adult stature, the man is still only twelve years old.
We stop off at a shopping mall to get Wolf some clothes that will fit his grown body. Quickly he proves that the juvenile delinquent lives on inside of him. We go to the mens section to pick out clothes for him to wear. But, rather than participate in the activity, Wolf lies on the floor lighting matches and letting them burn down to his fingers before blowing them out. He just lies under the racks of clothing, humming and mumbling to himself with a pile of stubbed out matches growing next to him. We hurriedly buy extra large sweat clothes and drag him out of the store.
We’re almost to Cleveland when we realize that we need gas and so we get off the highway and pick one of the smaller gas stations in the area to fill up. Wolf says he wants to stay in the car. But, once Jack and I are inside the mini-store paying for the gas we hear shrieks from outside. A woman comes rushing in screaming “there’s a wolf in the parking lot!”
I race outside, ignoring the yells of people around me to ‘not go out there’. Sure enough, there is a lone grey wolf growling and leaping around the lot of the gas station. He zeros in on a car full of shrieking children and circles the vehicle, menacing look on his face.
Slowly I come up behind the beast. “Wolf!” I shout.
When he hears my voice he turns around and his ears turn back. But he holds his ground. I advance towards it. I can only call on some greater power within me, that which all once borns share, that which binds us together, I bid that esoteric power to speak through me in that moment. I shut my eyes and feel it rush forward, from an ancient and deep well. As I open my eyes I know that from them comes the ancient glow. I can feel my teeth emerge, this time not to feed but to protect and challenge a misuse of power. From my own throat a deep growl emerges, simply saying “No”.
“No” the voice repeats through me as I continue moving toward the animal. “NO!” I’m within three feet of him. The rest of the world, the squealing children and onlookers shouting “what is she doing, lady get out of there!” fade to nothing in that moment where the old power inhabiting my features locks eyes with the wolf. Its ears back, the beast relents and runs away, tail between its legs.
In a matter of seconds I feel the power recede and dim. My teeth disappear and I see the world around me with fully human eyes again.
I turn around to see astonished faces coming from car and store windows. “Lady, how did you do that?” a man runs up to me asking feverishly.
“Something I learned while living on an Indian Reservation.” I tell him, eager to get out of here.
Jack meets me at the car wearing a panicked look. “He’s gone! You don’t think…”
I raise a hand to cut him off. “Wait” is all I say.
We sit silently in the car for a few minutes. Jack looks nervously at a map, hoping we don’t attract more attention and trying to ignore the people who are talking and pointing over toward our car. Soon enough I see the tall figure of Wolf come loping towards us from behind the gas station. He gets in the car, settling quietly in the back seat as if nothing has just happened.
I grab the rear view mirror and re-adjust it to find his eye level again. “No more tricks, young man.” I say to the dark eyes in the mirror.
“Yes ma’am” is all I hear from the backseat. We head off toward Pennsylvania in silence.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Nanowrimo - 22
Apprehension rises out of my gut like bees swarming from a hive, but I cannot avoid this boy.
Jack tugs on my arm “Let’s just go!”
I turn to him briefly, shaking my head, and step over to intercept the boy. He notices my shadow on the concrete before him before he notices me standing there. Looking up, the sunlight makes his face squirm and he squints to make me out. “Hello” I volunteer.
Must be not even 12. He certainly hasn’t had any sort of growth spurt, yet, and he certainly doesn’t exude the milk of human kindness. He steps back, keeping his arms folded tight at his chest. “w-chu wawn, lady? You another social worker comin round here to pester me and ma momma?”
“No, I’m not a social worker at all. My name is Eleanor, and I think you will find we have quite a lot in common. What is your name?”
“I gots nothin’ in common whit chu lady! What you come draggin’ yo sorry white ass around heya fo? You is a social worker, I can tell.” And with this he tries to push past me. But, I’m a little tougher to push aside than he realized.
“You’re not like other kids, are you? They’ve always seemed to stay away from you and you don’t know why. You think maybe its something you did or how you talk, or maybe you smell, but you don’t know.” He slows down a bit. “You have violent dreams in which you are a wild animal and you often wake up to find that you’ve destroyed the room where you sleep. Torn things up. Chewed on things. You don’t eat food. It tastes like nothing. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t hungry, does it? Sometimes you crave something to eat but know it would be unacceptable” He has stopped and looks up at me, still suspicious but interested. “Your top jaw sometimes aches. You wonder what blood tastes like. You see it spattered around in a TV show and it just looks sooo delicious! Doesn’t it?”
“What chu tryin to say? How you know ‘bout all that?”
“ I went through it, too. So did Jack, here. We, all three of us, have the same nature.”
Black eyes like two beads dart back and forth from Jack to me. “Whuzzat? What nature is zat?”
“First, my question. What is your name?”
After yet more hesitation he volunteers “m’names Artie. Now wha chu talkin’ about? What my nature?”
“Artie,” how does one explain this to a 12 year old? “We’re what you would call vampires.”
“WHAT!!! NAW SUHH! You is crazy! Nuh uh!!” I guess I should have expected that explosion. “You git on outta here!” he starts to back away, as if to run away from us.
Jack steps in to intercept him “Listen to us! You know it’s true. Think about it. Think about what you find yourself craving to eat – you want blood, don’t you? Tell me I’m wrong and we’ll leave you alone, but I’m not wrong – am I?”
He stops backing away and I see the incredulous fear in his eyes melt into recognition. “You means other folks get that way?”
“Yes, lots of people actually. We two, you, many many others live off human blood. We’ve always existed. It’s just the way we’re born.”
“I was born wit dis? Like I caught it from someone in my family?”
“It’s not a disease! It’s as natural as the fact that you’re a boy.”
“You twos is vampires?” He asks incredulously.
“The proper term is ‘once born’.” I inform him.
“Once-wha? I don’t gets it. Aren’t vampires supposed to wear black and have pointy teeth? You folks look like ten miles of bad road!” And he breaks into laughter. Ok, so I didn’t clean up too good after my morning feed and the patchwork quilt coat and denims are a bit, well, Iowa. Jack just looks like a bit of a dandy.
“Well, black isn’t really my style. We only need our teeth when we, uh, feed.”
“YOU kills people?”
“When I need to drink, yes I do. We all do.”
The twist this takes in his little mind surprises even me. From a skinny, shy, distrusting kid, right before our eyes he morphs into a little megalomaniac with dreams of terrorizing the neighborhood. “Cooool! This means if anyone bug me I can just kill ‘em! I’m a have super human strenth! I’se can fight now and throw people aroun’! An if anyones bugs me I just show em the fangs! AHHHH! An I make people pay me to not kill ‘em!”
While Artie jumps around with excitement planning his oligarchy of terror over the Robert Taylor homes, Jack turns to me. “I knew we should have just left him alone. God! I hate dealing with kids.”
“I know what you mean!” I share as I grin back at him. “We have to do this, Jack.
Finally, I catch Artie’s attention. “Look, Artie, man you gotta calm down. It’s not like that. It’s not like the movies at all – those are just stories people have been pulling out of folk tales for centuries. It’s just entertainment, not real. And most of that is just about repressed sexuality, anyways. And it is certainly not something you want to have attention called to. ”
He looks so disappointed. “You means I won’t be able to kill people I hates?”
“You will only kill to preserve yourself. The same way mortals eat. No one kills chickens for pleasure. Even normal people kill to eat.”
“Won’ I git super human strenth?”
Jack steps forward. “You can be strong but you’re going to spend a lot of time being hyper sensitive and grandiose.”
“Whazzat mean?”
“It means you have a lot to learn, young man.” I volunteer
“It means you can’t stay here, not for long. You need to be around your own kind, at least for a while.” Jack continues. And then Jack makes the kid an offer, which surprises me. “You must come with us. Now. Now that you know what you are things are only going to go badly for you here.” And he extends a hand for Artie to take.
But Artie slaps the hand away. “I ain’t goin wit no white folks. Can’t just up an leave momma like that! Nuh uh! I’m a stayin here! Make people afraid of ME! I’m a be rich and famous!”
“Look, I know that’s not going to work. We’re not going to force you. But if you change your mind, here’s my cell phone number.” And Jack hands the boy a slip of paper. “C’mon mum, lets get out of here.”
He grabs my elbow and aims us back toward the elevated train. We get on heading back downtown. “Someday, just someday, I’d like to go somewhere and not step into a hornets nest of trouble!” he whinges just after we find seats on the train.
I lean over, rubbing his shoulders “that’s part of reinvention, isn’t it? The alternative is death, remember? Or worse, Iowa.”
We find a decent hotel near downtown where I hole up in the bathroom, taking a long bath and shower, for about 2 hours. Embarrassed about my country-wear, Jack insists that we go shopping. Fashion and I have never gotten along too well. I like some of the new things but simply find the old more comforting. The absence of pinching tight undergarments cinching me into place still feels odd. After our spree is over, we’re passing through a drug store, bags in tow, to get some makeup for me when Jack nudges me and chuckles.
“Heya mum, it looks like your stunt made the papers!”
Sure enough, across the front a paper at the checkout the title “Vampires attack small town in Iowa!” is sprawled.
“Ah, the Weekly World News, now I’ve made the big time! I’m famous!”
The next morning Jack is trying to show me how to put all the make up onto my face when his cell phone goes off. After listening to the caller for a second he hands it over to me.
On the other end of the line, it’s Artie Jones. “M-miss Eleanor? Dis Artie, you remember me?” He’s sobbing.
“Yes I remember, of course. What is it? Did something happen?”
“I-I killed my momma! I didn’t know what I was doing, couldn’t stop myself. When I wuz done I realize I done killed momma! What I gonna do!”
Shit.
“Artie, calm down. Listen to me. Do you have a safe place? Do you have a place where you can go and no one finds you?”
“yes, I does. It’s under the overpass.”
“We’ll meet you there. Don’t worry, we’ll find you.”
I’m sure Chicago is a lovely city, but I continually manage to arrange these tours of its unsavory underbelly. Under the overpass leads us straight through a no-man’s land filled with the roar of cars. Artie crouches at the edge, looking so small I could miss him if I weren’t careful.
When he sees us he comes running up to me, then proceeds to start screaming and hitting me with his flailing arms. “It’s you fault! You fault I kill my momma! You hadn’t a come around with your ideas she’d be alive now! You fault!”
“Stop it!” I grab his shoulders. For the time being, I’m still stronger than he is. “We gave you the opportunity to come with us and we TOLD you that you had best leave. You made the choice not to listen! YOU did that Artie!” The struggling rage relents into shame and grief. I pull him close and hug him to me while he sobs. “Oh young man, if only the nature and the strength came with super intelligence, but it don’t. We never get past making mistakes, we just live long enough to work it out. I did something horrible, too. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Jack tugs on my arm “Let’s just go!”
I turn to him briefly, shaking my head, and step over to intercept the boy. He notices my shadow on the concrete before him before he notices me standing there. Looking up, the sunlight makes his face squirm and he squints to make me out. “Hello” I volunteer.
Must be not even 12. He certainly hasn’t had any sort of growth spurt, yet, and he certainly doesn’t exude the milk of human kindness. He steps back, keeping his arms folded tight at his chest. “w-chu wawn, lady? You another social worker comin round here to pester me and ma momma?”
“No, I’m not a social worker at all. My name is Eleanor, and I think you will find we have quite a lot in common. What is your name?”
“I gots nothin’ in common whit chu lady! What you come draggin’ yo sorry white ass around heya fo? You is a social worker, I can tell.” And with this he tries to push past me. But, I’m a little tougher to push aside than he realized.
“You’re not like other kids, are you? They’ve always seemed to stay away from you and you don’t know why. You think maybe its something you did or how you talk, or maybe you smell, but you don’t know.” He slows down a bit. “You have violent dreams in which you are a wild animal and you often wake up to find that you’ve destroyed the room where you sleep. Torn things up. Chewed on things. You don’t eat food. It tastes like nothing. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t hungry, does it? Sometimes you crave something to eat but know it would be unacceptable” He has stopped and looks up at me, still suspicious but interested. “Your top jaw sometimes aches. You wonder what blood tastes like. You see it spattered around in a TV show and it just looks sooo delicious! Doesn’t it?”
“What chu tryin to say? How you know ‘bout all that?”
“ I went through it, too. So did Jack, here. We, all three of us, have the same nature.”
Black eyes like two beads dart back and forth from Jack to me. “Whuzzat? What nature is zat?”
“First, my question. What is your name?”
After yet more hesitation he volunteers “m’names Artie. Now wha chu talkin’ about? What my nature?”
“Artie,” how does one explain this to a 12 year old? “We’re what you would call vampires.”
“WHAT!!! NAW SUHH! You is crazy! Nuh uh!!” I guess I should have expected that explosion. “You git on outta here!” he starts to back away, as if to run away from us.
Jack steps in to intercept him “Listen to us! You know it’s true. Think about it. Think about what you find yourself craving to eat – you want blood, don’t you? Tell me I’m wrong and we’ll leave you alone, but I’m not wrong – am I?”
He stops backing away and I see the incredulous fear in his eyes melt into recognition. “You means other folks get that way?”
“Yes, lots of people actually. We two, you, many many others live off human blood. We’ve always existed. It’s just the way we’re born.”
“I was born wit dis? Like I caught it from someone in my family?”
“It’s not a disease! It’s as natural as the fact that you’re a boy.”
“You twos is vampires?” He asks incredulously.
“The proper term is ‘once born’.” I inform him.
“Once-wha? I don’t gets it. Aren’t vampires supposed to wear black and have pointy teeth? You folks look like ten miles of bad road!” And he breaks into laughter. Ok, so I didn’t clean up too good after my morning feed and the patchwork quilt coat and denims are a bit, well, Iowa. Jack just looks like a bit of a dandy.
“Well, black isn’t really my style. We only need our teeth when we, uh, feed.”
“YOU kills people?”
“When I need to drink, yes I do. We all do.”
The twist this takes in his little mind surprises even me. From a skinny, shy, distrusting kid, right before our eyes he morphs into a little megalomaniac with dreams of terrorizing the neighborhood. “Cooool! This means if anyone bug me I can just kill ‘em! I’m a have super human strenth! I’se can fight now and throw people aroun’! An if anyones bugs me I just show em the fangs! AHHHH! An I make people pay me to not kill ‘em!”
While Artie jumps around with excitement planning his oligarchy of terror over the Robert Taylor homes, Jack turns to me. “I knew we should have just left him alone. God! I hate dealing with kids.”
“I know what you mean!” I share as I grin back at him. “We have to do this, Jack.
Finally, I catch Artie’s attention. “Look, Artie, man you gotta calm down. It’s not like that. It’s not like the movies at all – those are just stories people have been pulling out of folk tales for centuries. It’s just entertainment, not real. And most of that is just about repressed sexuality, anyways. And it is certainly not something you want to have attention called to. ”
He looks so disappointed. “You means I won’t be able to kill people I hates?”
“You will only kill to preserve yourself. The same way mortals eat. No one kills chickens for pleasure. Even normal people kill to eat.”
“Won’ I git super human strenth?”
Jack steps forward. “You can be strong but you’re going to spend a lot of time being hyper sensitive and grandiose.”
“Whazzat mean?”
“It means you have a lot to learn, young man.” I volunteer
“It means you can’t stay here, not for long. You need to be around your own kind, at least for a while.” Jack continues. And then Jack makes the kid an offer, which surprises me. “You must come with us. Now. Now that you know what you are things are only going to go badly for you here.” And he extends a hand for Artie to take.
But Artie slaps the hand away. “I ain’t goin wit no white folks. Can’t just up an leave momma like that! Nuh uh! I’m a stayin here! Make people afraid of ME! I’m a be rich and famous!”
“Look, I know that’s not going to work. We’re not going to force you. But if you change your mind, here’s my cell phone number.” And Jack hands the boy a slip of paper. “C’mon mum, lets get out of here.”
He grabs my elbow and aims us back toward the elevated train. We get on heading back downtown. “Someday, just someday, I’d like to go somewhere and not step into a hornets nest of trouble!” he whinges just after we find seats on the train.
I lean over, rubbing his shoulders “that’s part of reinvention, isn’t it? The alternative is death, remember? Or worse, Iowa.”
We find a decent hotel near downtown where I hole up in the bathroom, taking a long bath and shower, for about 2 hours. Embarrassed about my country-wear, Jack insists that we go shopping. Fashion and I have never gotten along too well. I like some of the new things but simply find the old more comforting. The absence of pinching tight undergarments cinching me into place still feels odd. After our spree is over, we’re passing through a drug store, bags in tow, to get some makeup for me when Jack nudges me and chuckles.
“Heya mum, it looks like your stunt made the papers!”
Sure enough, across the front a paper at the checkout the title “Vampires attack small town in Iowa!” is sprawled.
“Ah, the Weekly World News, now I’ve made the big time! I’m famous!”
The next morning Jack is trying to show me how to put all the make up onto my face when his cell phone goes off. After listening to the caller for a second he hands it over to me.
On the other end of the line, it’s Artie Jones. “M-miss Eleanor? Dis Artie, you remember me?” He’s sobbing.
“Yes I remember, of course. What is it? Did something happen?”
“I-I killed my momma! I didn’t know what I was doing, couldn’t stop myself. When I wuz done I realize I done killed momma! What I gonna do!”
Shit.
“Artie, calm down. Listen to me. Do you have a safe place? Do you have a place where you can go and no one finds you?”
“yes, I does. It’s under the overpass.”
“We’ll meet you there. Don’t worry, we’ll find you.”
I’m sure Chicago is a lovely city, but I continually manage to arrange these tours of its unsavory underbelly. Under the overpass leads us straight through a no-man’s land filled with the roar of cars. Artie crouches at the edge, looking so small I could miss him if I weren’t careful.
When he sees us he comes running up to me, then proceeds to start screaming and hitting me with his flailing arms. “It’s you fault! You fault I kill my momma! You hadn’t a come around with your ideas she’d be alive now! You fault!”
“Stop it!” I grab his shoulders. For the time being, I’m still stronger than he is. “We gave you the opportunity to come with us and we TOLD you that you had best leave. You made the choice not to listen! YOU did that Artie!” The struggling rage relents into shame and grief. I pull him close and hug him to me while he sobs. “Oh young man, if only the nature and the strength came with super intelligence, but it don’t. We never get past making mistakes, we just live long enough to work it out. I did something horrible, too. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Friday, November 21, 2008
Nanowrimo -21
It all moves so fast. And I’m used to fast by now, I do drive, after all. But there’s so much of it, in every direction the eyes turn. Highways pump masses of cars along like mechanical arteries. Planes descend overhead at regular intervals like artificial eagles coming home to roost. The train whizzes along, making a blur of objects in the foreground. A knot is forming in my gut as the grey mass of city takes over the landscape around us. I can feel the immense density of its humanity. Millions of thoughts, feelings, hopes, despairs, little deaths, all mush and press and layer and inter-fold upon one another. The air itself feels pasty and hard to breathe.
“I don’t like big cities.” I confess to Jack.
“I know. But it’s a necessary evil for continuing our adventure, mum.”
He seems awfully chipper about all of this. What is he up to? “Do you like it here?”
“I like what I can get here.” I glance over at his grin & it’s slightly reassuring.
Once exit the train station downtown, everyone seems to be in such a terrible hurry; in a hurry to wind through the rat’s maze of their own making. Jack grabs my arm as my head starts to bob and follow each manic passerby.
“This way” and he heads me down a street and up a set of stairs. Above the street trains clatter and screech along on elevated tracks. Whoever thought this up had no consideration whatsoever for the humans who would inhabit this space. This is the city of machines and one must lend one’s body and time to the machine that they may survive, get what one needs and get out with a margin of life left.
At the top of the stairs we are greeted by turnstiles barring our entry onto the train’s platform. I step over to a booth where a woman sits behind thick glass and ask for a ticket. At first she ignores me. Then she shouts something to me that is incomprehensible through the barrier between us. Several confused looks and “I can’t hear you’s” later she points to a machine behind me which dispenses passes for riding. Why do they have someone sitting in a booth if there is no need to sell tickets? We dicker over the machine for a few minutes.
“I thought you said you had been here before!”
“I was, but they changed the system since I was here. Last time they just took cash.”
“Do you know where to go once we get in?”
“Yeah I’m pretty sure. They haven’t changed the train lines around really for decades.”
“When is the last time you were here?”
“The early 90’s. It sure has cleaned up since then!”
This is clean? I want to ask out loud but I stop myself. No sense starting trouble now. “Where are we going, by the way?”
“South side.”
“South side of Chicago.”
“Yup.”
“You are dragging me to the South Side of Chicago, as written about in such fine tomes as ‘Ain’t No Makin’ It’ and ‘Chicago’? That south side?”
“Will you quit worrying? Jeees! Mum you are starting to be a real drag. We will be fine.”
“I’d rather be a drag than in the hot seat. Sometimes being a drag is just plain being the smart one. Look at us, Jack! We’re among the whitest of the white on Earth. We don’t belong on the South side of Chicago, not if it’s anything like what I’ve heard about.”
“I can’t believe you are such a racist! YOU! How can you hold race up to make such a big difference when you yourself were born so terribly different with a trait no one can see on your skin!”
“I’m not talking race. I’m talking territory. I’m talking about culture. We are invaders and we are going to be walking targets!”
“For what? What? What could possibly hurt you?”
I hold my tongue. We’re already on a southbound train. The question is more one of ‘whom could we possibly hurt’? I look out the window of the elevated car as it rocks along the tracks. Directly below us houses, squeezed together cheek by jowel, pass by. Laundry hangs off ropes tied across back porches. Toys lay strewn in backyards left deserted by winter. The train turns briefly and I see my own reflection in the glass mapped across the skyline. It’s so easy to end up entirely alone in a maze this jammed with people. From a distance the tall buildings of downtown remind me of a Jewish cemetery with all of its headstones packed together tight.
We get off at 47th street and start heading down a street filled with bedraggled remains of once fine houses and floating bits of trash. Then I see them. Mile after mile of homogenous concrete buildings stretch north to south. There’s a sinister nature in their lack of diversity. Character is not given through artistry or architecture but through the scars each edifice has earned. Burn marks streak the sides of one building. Windows are broken, façades pocked with bullet marks on another. Each looks like a whole lot of the bad life beat it up and left a nasty bruise.
“C’mon” Jack grabs my arm and heads toward it.
“I am NOT going in there!”
“Well you’ll be in bigger shit if I leave you standing out here on your own! Now come on!” This time he seizes my elbow in a most unforgiving vice and I lurch along behind him, whingeing all the way. “Look, we want passports, right? Well the type of people who make nice passports for people who aren’t nice do not live in bloody Lincoln Park. They live here. Welcome to the projects.”
He is hell bent on aiming us into one of the buildings when a tall, black man with a shifty gaze steps in front of us. Under his breath Jack warns “not a word out of you.”
“ w’chu wawn?” He never quite opens his eyes more than halfway and seems most intent about chewing on the toothpick in his mouth. But with arms folded and legs in colossus stride, it’s clear there’s no getting past this man. Man? Upon closer inspection he looks like more of a very tall boy.
“Looking for Stubs.” Is all Jack says.
“What bidness you got wid Stubs?”
“Private business. He’s usually quite pleased to see me.”
“We don’ like folks just comin on in here that don’ belong here.” He looks us over good, giving us his best evil eye and persistently chewing that stupid toothpick. I want to yank it out of his mouth and order him to pull his pants up. Maybe Jack’s right. I am a racist.
“Perhaps you could tell Stubs that ‘Jack Black’ is here?”
“Whatin-a hell kinda name i-zat? ‘Jack Black’! Donchu come roun here makin like you is all gangsta and shit. I look like yo foo? I look like I your messenger o’ sompin? Who you think you is comin in here treating me like a nigga?? You think ah’m yo nigga mista white an’ mighty?”
I’m way too old to put up with his lip. “Hey! Who asked you to step in our way, you moron!” I shout. “You own this place that you can stand in front of the door like a troll or are you just bored? If this is your turf then why don’t you get busy and start fixing it up?”
His jaw drops only briefly before he pulls a revolver from the front of his pants yelling “BITCH!” I don’t know where the speed or gumption comes from but I lunge forward and grab the wrist of the gun arm, pull him toward me and set fangs into him. I don’t go in deep enough to drink, just to put in the first shot of venom. He drops to the concrete like a lump. I keep the gun.
“After that cry-baby act I didn’t think you had it in you.” Jack crouches next to the body to examine the boy. “Nice work! Very neat. And to think you were scared.”
“Eh… He had a shitty gun-hand. Kids these days! They expect that fancy high-powered, semi-automatic assault weapon to do all the work for them. Not a one of them learns to handle a gun with a real fighter’s grace. Shame what things come to.” Lying on the ground without his tough expression, I can see he’s actually quite a handsome young man, almost beautiful. But here he is, in this giant concrete filing cabinet where the government stuffs people it can’t understand.
“How long do you think he’ll be out? How much did you shoot in there?”
“Enough to leave him looking like a helpless girl on the ground for a few hours. Now, we got someone to see here or not?”
Stubs home, or cell, depending on your perspective, is piled high with ledgers, paper stocks, and computers of all different models. The clatter, whiz and hum of printers emanates from another room. A few dim fluorescents hang from the ceiling. Most of the light in the room is emitted by spot lights that hover over desks with lenses attached to their necks.
“That you Jack Black?” A voice calls out as we let ourselves in. In the kitchen, fixing some tea is a portly old man in long underwear and pants held up with suspenders over the top. As he turns I see spectacles, with a jewelers’ lens attached, balancing on his nose. He looks like an African-American Santa. “I heard that commotion and I figured it was you. Someone giving you trouble out there?”
“Nooo sir, not at all. Just a fine lad trying to protect the door is all.”
“Oh, that be Elmur. Didn’t hurt him too bad did you?” And he chuckles.
“I didn’t touch a hair on his head. But mummy here kicked his ass!”
“yo muthuh?” And old Stubs bends over in a laugh that sounds more like a cough. “Ha haa! That is jus’ too good! Now whut chew come on over to see Stubs fo?”
“Well, we, my mother and I, need some identification.”
“m-HM! I see I see. Where you goin off to this time?”
I almost volunteer an answer to his question when I realize that honesty is probably not a good idea here. I hold back and decide to let Jack do the talking. I’ll stick to the fighting!
“Oh all around. Mexico, Cuba, maybe off to the Carribean.”
“Ha! You won’t make it out of Tiajuana! Alrighty then. You need passports and what else?
“Driver’s license” Jack offers.
“And birth certificates” I add on. Hey if this guy is that good, why not?
A few hours later and some less some gold, we each emerge with our new identities in hand. My new passport rests inside my shirt, bearing my new name “Eleanor McClean”. That was Gabriel’s name and I do sometimes miss wearing it.
“Hm. Irish. Well, if anyones can pull dat one off its you, ma’am!” was Stubs final call on the monicker.
Jack had wanted me to give up ‘Eleanor’ as well, but he also knew better than to fight me on it. Showing his own flair, Jack became “Blake Breton”.
“May I continue to simply call you ‘Jack’?”
Outside the afternoon is wearing on. The season is starting to relent and the few patches of what passes for grass squish under our feet. School is out for the day and throngs of children rush past, making all sorts of noise and chatter. From the herd wafts a scent of sweat and fried food.
Just then we notice another sullen figure coming up behind them. Walking slow with his head down, he’s the real reason we’re here.
“I don’t like big cities.” I confess to Jack.
“I know. But it’s a necessary evil for continuing our adventure, mum.”
He seems awfully chipper about all of this. What is he up to? “Do you like it here?”
“I like what I can get here.” I glance over at his grin & it’s slightly reassuring.
Once exit the train station downtown, everyone seems to be in such a terrible hurry; in a hurry to wind through the rat’s maze of their own making. Jack grabs my arm as my head starts to bob and follow each manic passerby.
“This way” and he heads me down a street and up a set of stairs. Above the street trains clatter and screech along on elevated tracks. Whoever thought this up had no consideration whatsoever for the humans who would inhabit this space. This is the city of machines and one must lend one’s body and time to the machine that they may survive, get what one needs and get out with a margin of life left.
At the top of the stairs we are greeted by turnstiles barring our entry onto the train’s platform. I step over to a booth where a woman sits behind thick glass and ask for a ticket. At first she ignores me. Then she shouts something to me that is incomprehensible through the barrier between us. Several confused looks and “I can’t hear you’s” later she points to a machine behind me which dispenses passes for riding. Why do they have someone sitting in a booth if there is no need to sell tickets? We dicker over the machine for a few minutes.
“I thought you said you had been here before!”
“I was, but they changed the system since I was here. Last time they just took cash.”
“Do you know where to go once we get in?”
“Yeah I’m pretty sure. They haven’t changed the train lines around really for decades.”
“When is the last time you were here?”
“The early 90’s. It sure has cleaned up since then!”
This is clean? I want to ask out loud but I stop myself. No sense starting trouble now. “Where are we going, by the way?”
“South side.”
“South side of Chicago.”
“Yup.”
“You are dragging me to the South Side of Chicago, as written about in such fine tomes as ‘Ain’t No Makin’ It’ and ‘Chicago’? That south side?”
“Will you quit worrying? Jeees! Mum you are starting to be a real drag. We will be fine.”
“I’d rather be a drag than in the hot seat. Sometimes being a drag is just plain being the smart one. Look at us, Jack! We’re among the whitest of the white on Earth. We don’t belong on the South side of Chicago, not if it’s anything like what I’ve heard about.”
“I can’t believe you are such a racist! YOU! How can you hold race up to make such a big difference when you yourself were born so terribly different with a trait no one can see on your skin!”
“I’m not talking race. I’m talking territory. I’m talking about culture. We are invaders and we are going to be walking targets!”
“For what? What? What could possibly hurt you?”
I hold my tongue. We’re already on a southbound train. The question is more one of ‘whom could we possibly hurt’? I look out the window of the elevated car as it rocks along the tracks. Directly below us houses, squeezed together cheek by jowel, pass by. Laundry hangs off ropes tied across back porches. Toys lay strewn in backyards left deserted by winter. The train turns briefly and I see my own reflection in the glass mapped across the skyline. It’s so easy to end up entirely alone in a maze this jammed with people. From a distance the tall buildings of downtown remind me of a Jewish cemetery with all of its headstones packed together tight.
We get off at 47th street and start heading down a street filled with bedraggled remains of once fine houses and floating bits of trash. Then I see them. Mile after mile of homogenous concrete buildings stretch north to south. There’s a sinister nature in their lack of diversity. Character is not given through artistry or architecture but through the scars each edifice has earned. Burn marks streak the sides of one building. Windows are broken, façades pocked with bullet marks on another. Each looks like a whole lot of the bad life beat it up and left a nasty bruise.
“C’mon” Jack grabs my arm and heads toward it.
“I am NOT going in there!”
“Well you’ll be in bigger shit if I leave you standing out here on your own! Now come on!” This time he seizes my elbow in a most unforgiving vice and I lurch along behind him, whingeing all the way. “Look, we want passports, right? Well the type of people who make nice passports for people who aren’t nice do not live in bloody Lincoln Park. They live here. Welcome to the projects.”
He is hell bent on aiming us into one of the buildings when a tall, black man with a shifty gaze steps in front of us. Under his breath Jack warns “not a word out of you.”
“ w’chu wawn?” He never quite opens his eyes more than halfway and seems most intent about chewing on the toothpick in his mouth. But with arms folded and legs in colossus stride, it’s clear there’s no getting past this man. Man? Upon closer inspection he looks like more of a very tall boy.
“Looking for Stubs.” Is all Jack says.
“What bidness you got wid Stubs?”
“Private business. He’s usually quite pleased to see me.”
“We don’ like folks just comin on in here that don’ belong here.” He looks us over good, giving us his best evil eye and persistently chewing that stupid toothpick. I want to yank it out of his mouth and order him to pull his pants up. Maybe Jack’s right. I am a racist.
“Perhaps you could tell Stubs that ‘Jack Black’ is here?”
“Whatin-a hell kinda name i-zat? ‘Jack Black’! Donchu come roun here makin like you is all gangsta and shit. I look like yo foo? I look like I your messenger o’ sompin? Who you think you is comin in here treating me like a nigga?? You think ah’m yo nigga mista white an’ mighty?”
I’m way too old to put up with his lip. “Hey! Who asked you to step in our way, you moron!” I shout. “You own this place that you can stand in front of the door like a troll or are you just bored? If this is your turf then why don’t you get busy and start fixing it up?”
His jaw drops only briefly before he pulls a revolver from the front of his pants yelling “BITCH!” I don’t know where the speed or gumption comes from but I lunge forward and grab the wrist of the gun arm, pull him toward me and set fangs into him. I don’t go in deep enough to drink, just to put in the first shot of venom. He drops to the concrete like a lump. I keep the gun.
“After that cry-baby act I didn’t think you had it in you.” Jack crouches next to the body to examine the boy. “Nice work! Very neat. And to think you were scared.”
“Eh… He had a shitty gun-hand. Kids these days! They expect that fancy high-powered, semi-automatic assault weapon to do all the work for them. Not a one of them learns to handle a gun with a real fighter’s grace. Shame what things come to.” Lying on the ground without his tough expression, I can see he’s actually quite a handsome young man, almost beautiful. But here he is, in this giant concrete filing cabinet where the government stuffs people it can’t understand.
“How long do you think he’ll be out? How much did you shoot in there?”
“Enough to leave him looking like a helpless girl on the ground for a few hours. Now, we got someone to see here or not?”
Stubs home, or cell, depending on your perspective, is piled high with ledgers, paper stocks, and computers of all different models. The clatter, whiz and hum of printers emanates from another room. A few dim fluorescents hang from the ceiling. Most of the light in the room is emitted by spot lights that hover over desks with lenses attached to their necks.
“That you Jack Black?” A voice calls out as we let ourselves in. In the kitchen, fixing some tea is a portly old man in long underwear and pants held up with suspenders over the top. As he turns I see spectacles, with a jewelers’ lens attached, balancing on his nose. He looks like an African-American Santa. “I heard that commotion and I figured it was you. Someone giving you trouble out there?”
“Nooo sir, not at all. Just a fine lad trying to protect the door is all.”
“Oh, that be Elmur. Didn’t hurt him too bad did you?” And he chuckles.
“I didn’t touch a hair on his head. But mummy here kicked his ass!”
“yo muthuh?” And old Stubs bends over in a laugh that sounds more like a cough. “Ha haa! That is jus’ too good! Now whut chew come on over to see Stubs fo?”
“Well, we, my mother and I, need some identification.”
“m-HM! I see I see. Where you goin off to this time?”
I almost volunteer an answer to his question when I realize that honesty is probably not a good idea here. I hold back and decide to let Jack do the talking. I’ll stick to the fighting!
“Oh all around. Mexico, Cuba, maybe off to the Carribean.”
“Ha! You won’t make it out of Tiajuana! Alrighty then. You need passports and what else?
“Driver’s license” Jack offers.
“And birth certificates” I add on. Hey if this guy is that good, why not?
A few hours later and some less some gold, we each emerge with our new identities in hand. My new passport rests inside my shirt, bearing my new name “Eleanor McClean”. That was Gabriel’s name and I do sometimes miss wearing it.
“Hm. Irish. Well, if anyones can pull dat one off its you, ma’am!” was Stubs final call on the monicker.
Jack had wanted me to give up ‘Eleanor’ as well, but he also knew better than to fight me on it. Showing his own flair, Jack became “Blake Breton”.
“May I continue to simply call you ‘Jack’?”
Outside the afternoon is wearing on. The season is starting to relent and the few patches of what passes for grass squish under our feet. School is out for the day and throngs of children rush past, making all sorts of noise and chatter. From the herd wafts a scent of sweat and fried food.
Just then we notice another sullen figure coming up behind them. Walking slow with his head down, he’s the real reason we’re here.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Nanowrimo - 20
In the nook of space behind the drivers seat, I'm cradled and rocked off to sleep by the motion of the car as it bumps down the road. The sounds around me drift away as if I’m sinking under the surface of the sea. The water is warm and dark and still. Nothing can get to me down here. No lost thoughts, no memories, no animal visions, no images. I rest in the deep darkness.
How much later, I don't know how long, a terrific howling pulls me from dead slumber. A racket comes from the direction of the front seat. After a minute of confusion I recognize the source. It’s Jack howling along with the radio.
"Beyoncé?" I ask. Pulling myself up to see.
"Good catch! Not bad for an old fart.”
“I’m not so very much older than you, mate.”
“ True, very true. How are you feeling? You went to sleep like a baby after its bottle!"
"I feel ok. At least physically. My body feels great."
"Good, climb up front and lets talk about how we're gonna get out of this mess."
I pile over the passenger seat, getting stuck only briefly when I manage to wedge myself between the seat and the roof of the car, which brings Jack some indelicate moments to laugh at. Finally I land in place and belt myself in, which makes Jack look at me funny until I remind him that driving without a seat belt on invites in the law. With this he fastens his own.
"Is this really such a good idea? Me sitting in front? Aren't they going to be looking for me?"
"Even if someone has discovered your home yet, which I doubt, they're going to be on the hunt for a woman in her 50's." He flips down the visor and opens the mirror. "You're not that woman anymore."
The face staring back at me causes me to catch my breath up short. I had grown so accustomed to the dry, spotting skin, the face that quoted each smile with lines about the eyes and mouth and the silver weaving its way through my hair. So strange to see her face again, young as the day I was married to Fitz, she is, and smooth. My hair is thick again and bright in color. I feel down my body. The parts which had begun to migrate with age are firmly back in their original locations. Jack just grins as I make my discoveries. Suppleness has returned, scars have disappeared. It feels right to be in my own skin, again.
"And to think you wanted to give this up." He grins. I won't award him the satisfaction, of a reply, not yet.
He continues "I've been staying on back roads to avoid places where they photograph the car. Bloody good deal you drive a Prius. We won't have to worry about stopping for gas. But we're going to be nearing Chicago soon, so we have to loose these wheels."
"I'm surprised they aren't already after us."
"Probably no one will notice until she who became your breakfast doesn't come home in the evening."
"Any number of things can happen. A delivery person could come by, or if enough calls get ignored someone might drive over. I don't think I had any appointments today where I'd be missed."
"Whatever it was, the urge knew it was the right day."
"I suppose. It didn't take long to find Jones, though, and he was a shut-in."
"I called 9-1-1." He blurts out the confession as if he were saying 'I have to stop for cigarettes'.
"What?"
"I told you! I called Emergency. As soon as I came down from the high I rang them up and scooted. What's the big deal?"
Just as we were seeming to get along, all the reasons I'm angry with him come flying forward. "How could you have done such a thing to such a sweet man!"
"Stop it. You know how. You did the same thing not three hours ago."
"I saw his body! You had him drawn and quartered and broken like - like I used to watch them torture criminals! It was horrible! Absolutely disgusting and frightening! How could you have done such a horrible, cruel thing?"
"The same way you smashed up your house, woman! I don't even remember doing it! I just remember... I remember how it felt. And I remember how it felt to sense you finding his body. Look, I know how sad it makes you to think about it but he didn't die in pain."
I hold my tongue for a long while. 'Sad' is not the word to describe my feelings. Finally I peel my eyes from the winter landscape and turn to him. "How did he die then? Tell me."
"I'll tell you if you tell me the juicy tale what finally made your resolve slip up."
"Deal. Tell me all of it."
"Alrighty. Just after you left I flew back over there."
"As the Corax? He saw you as the Corax?"
"Yes, now don't interrupt. After you left he remained sitting at that kitchen table for a while, staring off into space. He was looking out at his garden and missing his wife. You could feel it coming through the walls so great was his longing. He couldn't understand why he had been left on Earth so long while everybody else had transitioned on to heaven. He was lonely. So, I flew over to the kitchen window and tapped on the glass. He saw me and came over, talking to me through the glass. 'Hey there old man' he said, 'you come to keep an old fella company?' And he opened the window for me.”
“Hm, Fella… that’s a word he would use.”
"I just hopped in. He brought over the remnants of the soup in his plate and fed me some chicken. He was very sweet, very gentle. He never saw me coming. When he turned to put the dish into he sink I morphed and took him from behind. He felt maybe only a moment's sensation. That's all."
I'm crying and he tries again to console me. "There there! He barely felt a thing. Mummy, I was much gentler than the heart attack heading for."
As much as I hate it I have to credit that discernment. "hmm. all that canned food. You're right. It shits me how mortals are so terrible at keeping themselves alive. Even the nice ones."
"So, your turn now. What happened this morning?"
"Well, I had the urge before I was even awake. I was having this dream that I was a fox, running from the hounds. And when I woke up those pointy little fox teeth were still in my mouth. The urge had me in its grasp and I was struggling for control. It kept dragging me around, down the stairs, toward something. But, I have some ways to control it that usually work. I was using those, or trying to, although it was a battle against my own limbs to do so. I even bit at my own hand."
"How can you RESIST it?" He's incredulous. "Especially after so long? How do you do that?"
"Well, I listen to U2 and eat bacon." After a stunned pause he laughs so hard the car almost goes off the road. "Easy! Easy! Don’t wreck us out here because I don’t plan on drinking any more Midwesterners."
"I’m terribly sorry, please continue" He says with a flutter.
"I managed to get to my iPod and get the music on. After that I started to calm down enough to go fry up some bacon. So, I'm standing in the kitchen, still in my nightgown, which is drenched with sweat from the battle, eating sizzling-hot bacon straight out of the pan, teeth still protruding, when the bitch comes up behind me and startles me."
Jack cannot contain himself for a second. He's beginning to titter. I never realized that this could be so funny. "He he he! You must have been a sight!" he says in a high voice.
"So, I'm all startled, I turn around and realize that she's seen me with the whole fangs and eyes thing going on, not to mention that I've got grease all over my front side and I'm sweating profusely. What could I do? I had to take her down! Bitch deserved it. No one catches me in a moment like that and gets to live!"
We're both in hysterics for minutes.
"That has to be the funniest feed story I have EVER heard! Ahhhh finally! Proof that you're my mom!"
We laugh for a few more minutes, guffawing over Eileen’s pathetic last words on Earth “you have an ipod!” before I have to ask "so, why are you helping me? I thought you were mad at me. I thought you wanted to fight."
He lets out a long sigh. "Oh mummy, anger just makes time go slower. I’ve not spent all of these years chasing you for revenge. That’s so mortal! This was all I wanted!”
He smiles but I catch the faint scent of doubt under his words. He may want to believe what he’s just said, but he doesn’t know he’s not 100% there yet. No matter. We’ve got to much time between us to reconcile for anyone to be 100%, yet.
“So, what’s in that box? You ever going to open it?”
“It’s for Agnoletti. A gift.”
“Why didn’t you give it to him?”
“He refused it.”
“So why don’t you open it for yourself? What you got in there, the holy grail or something?”
“Not mine. Belongs to Zoltan if Agnoletti doesn’t want it.”
“Zoltan.. I know that name.”
“Yes, he lived in Paris. I found my way to him after leaving… after I abandoned you and your father. He trained me. I left him just before he died. He starved himself to death. I tried getting him to feed but, after 2,300 years he decided that he’d seen enough.”
“Zoltan… died? Really?” There’s a note of doubt in his voice. “Have you ever gone back to Paris to check?”
“Need a passport. I got a fake birth certificate and driver’s license, but passports are another story. They get out the proctoscopes when you come calling for one of them. Especially now. And I suppose I got set in my life, didn’t want to move on or face the many challenges that regular reinvention brings on.”
“They don’t chop off people’s heads in the town square, anymore. And to boot it hasn’t been a war zone in years! You’d like Paris, Mum! Hey, I know a fabulous forger in Chicago - top of the line! He can hook you up with a passport in a snap!”
“And if they don’t? We get carted off to jail.”
“And if that happens we’ll solve that problem the same way once borns have always gotten themselves out of tight places… we’ll EAT our way out!”
“I don’t like it.”
“Oh Come on! You’ve let Iowa get into your head! C’mon mum! We only live once!”
I have to hesitate, this could be fun or it could be trouble. But, Jack looks so excited so I concede. “ok!”
“Great!” he grins and drives a little faster.
Winding around on side streets to avoid any intersections that might have lights and, therefore, cameras, we drive to the furthest reach that one of Chicago’s Metra lines sends out into the countryside on spidery legs. We park the car on a residential street and walk to the station, hopping the next train downtown. As the grey, toothy skyline of Chicago rises out of flat land, Jack and I both start to sense it. We are coming to Chicago for more reasons that we originally bargained for.
Somewhere on the south side of Chicago, hiding away in the Robert Taylor homes, sits Artie. Little Artie Jones doesn’t socialize well with the other children. His teachers think it’s because he lives in the projects and his dad was a junkie who deserted the family after selling off everything they owned for dope. His momma figures it’s because of the mistreatment he gets at school. Sometimes she tell him “don’ be so SENSITIVE! Boy you can’ listen to what mess they be talkin’!” Some times she figures that he really just needs a father. It’s just that there’s few father figures to be had. At least where she is and how she sees the world. But on this day, little Artie Jones is hiding out in his room. Late winter sun filters through the dirty window and an acrid smell fills the air. He’s taken the cigarette lighter from his momma’s purse, which he employs in the sinister act of melting the face off of a GI Joe that he has stolen from the toy box at school. Under his bed he conceals the melted, exploded, tortured remains of many purloined action figure. More than a few of these remnants are covered with strange chew marks. Sometimes Artie will wake up with one of the dolls in his hand, looking like dog just ate on it but they don’t have a dog. Sometimes he dreams he’s a wild animal and he wakes up to find the sheets torn up. He hides the torn sheets and steals new ones from the lady next door when she hang hers out to dry.
Artie knows something about him ain’t right like the other kids but he can’t place it. The blame won’t squarely fit on any one source. And today, thirty miles to the south of the Robert Taylor homes, two once-borns approach to collect one of their own.
How much later, I don't know how long, a terrific howling pulls me from dead slumber. A racket comes from the direction of the front seat. After a minute of confusion I recognize the source. It’s Jack howling along with the radio.
"Beyoncé?" I ask. Pulling myself up to see.
"Good catch! Not bad for an old fart.”
“I’m not so very much older than you, mate.”
“ True, very true. How are you feeling? You went to sleep like a baby after its bottle!"
"I feel ok. At least physically. My body feels great."
"Good, climb up front and lets talk about how we're gonna get out of this mess."
I pile over the passenger seat, getting stuck only briefly when I manage to wedge myself between the seat and the roof of the car, which brings Jack some indelicate moments to laugh at. Finally I land in place and belt myself in, which makes Jack look at me funny until I remind him that driving without a seat belt on invites in the law. With this he fastens his own.
"Is this really such a good idea? Me sitting in front? Aren't they going to be looking for me?"
"Even if someone has discovered your home yet, which I doubt, they're going to be on the hunt for a woman in her 50's." He flips down the visor and opens the mirror. "You're not that woman anymore."
The face staring back at me causes me to catch my breath up short. I had grown so accustomed to the dry, spotting skin, the face that quoted each smile with lines about the eyes and mouth and the silver weaving its way through my hair. So strange to see her face again, young as the day I was married to Fitz, she is, and smooth. My hair is thick again and bright in color. I feel down my body. The parts which had begun to migrate with age are firmly back in their original locations. Jack just grins as I make my discoveries. Suppleness has returned, scars have disappeared. It feels right to be in my own skin, again.
"And to think you wanted to give this up." He grins. I won't award him the satisfaction, of a reply, not yet.
He continues "I've been staying on back roads to avoid places where they photograph the car. Bloody good deal you drive a Prius. We won't have to worry about stopping for gas. But we're going to be nearing Chicago soon, so we have to loose these wheels."
"I'm surprised they aren't already after us."
"Probably no one will notice until she who became your breakfast doesn't come home in the evening."
"Any number of things can happen. A delivery person could come by, or if enough calls get ignored someone might drive over. I don't think I had any appointments today where I'd be missed."
"Whatever it was, the urge knew it was the right day."
"I suppose. It didn't take long to find Jones, though, and he was a shut-in."
"I called 9-1-1." He blurts out the confession as if he were saying 'I have to stop for cigarettes'.
"What?"
"I told you! I called Emergency. As soon as I came down from the high I rang them up and scooted. What's the big deal?"
Just as we were seeming to get along, all the reasons I'm angry with him come flying forward. "How could you have done such a thing to such a sweet man!"
"Stop it. You know how. You did the same thing not three hours ago."
"I saw his body! You had him drawn and quartered and broken like - like I used to watch them torture criminals! It was horrible! Absolutely disgusting and frightening! How could you have done such a horrible, cruel thing?"
"The same way you smashed up your house, woman! I don't even remember doing it! I just remember... I remember how it felt. And I remember how it felt to sense you finding his body. Look, I know how sad it makes you to think about it but he didn't die in pain."
I hold my tongue for a long while. 'Sad' is not the word to describe my feelings. Finally I peel my eyes from the winter landscape and turn to him. "How did he die then? Tell me."
"I'll tell you if you tell me the juicy tale what finally made your resolve slip up."
"Deal. Tell me all of it."
"Alrighty. Just after you left I flew back over there."
"As the Corax? He saw you as the Corax?"
"Yes, now don't interrupt. After you left he remained sitting at that kitchen table for a while, staring off into space. He was looking out at his garden and missing his wife. You could feel it coming through the walls so great was his longing. He couldn't understand why he had been left on Earth so long while everybody else had transitioned on to heaven. He was lonely. So, I flew over to the kitchen window and tapped on the glass. He saw me and came over, talking to me through the glass. 'Hey there old man' he said, 'you come to keep an old fella company?' And he opened the window for me.”
“Hm, Fella… that’s a word he would use.”
"I just hopped in. He brought over the remnants of the soup in his plate and fed me some chicken. He was very sweet, very gentle. He never saw me coming. When he turned to put the dish into he sink I morphed and took him from behind. He felt maybe only a moment's sensation. That's all."
I'm crying and he tries again to console me. "There there! He barely felt a thing. Mummy, I was much gentler than the heart attack heading for."
As much as I hate it I have to credit that discernment. "hmm. all that canned food. You're right. It shits me how mortals are so terrible at keeping themselves alive. Even the nice ones."
"So, your turn now. What happened this morning?"
"Well, I had the urge before I was even awake. I was having this dream that I was a fox, running from the hounds. And when I woke up those pointy little fox teeth were still in my mouth. The urge had me in its grasp and I was struggling for control. It kept dragging me around, down the stairs, toward something. But, I have some ways to control it that usually work. I was using those, or trying to, although it was a battle against my own limbs to do so. I even bit at my own hand."
"How can you RESIST it?" He's incredulous. "Especially after so long? How do you do that?"
"Well, I listen to U2 and eat bacon." After a stunned pause he laughs so hard the car almost goes off the road. "Easy! Easy! Don’t wreck us out here because I don’t plan on drinking any more Midwesterners."
"I’m terribly sorry, please continue" He says with a flutter.
"I managed to get to my iPod and get the music on. After that I started to calm down enough to go fry up some bacon. So, I'm standing in the kitchen, still in my nightgown, which is drenched with sweat from the battle, eating sizzling-hot bacon straight out of the pan, teeth still protruding, when the bitch comes up behind me and startles me."
Jack cannot contain himself for a second. He's beginning to titter. I never realized that this could be so funny. "He he he! You must have been a sight!" he says in a high voice.
"So, I'm all startled, I turn around and realize that she's seen me with the whole fangs and eyes thing going on, not to mention that I've got grease all over my front side and I'm sweating profusely. What could I do? I had to take her down! Bitch deserved it. No one catches me in a moment like that and gets to live!"
We're both in hysterics for minutes.
"That has to be the funniest feed story I have EVER heard! Ahhhh finally! Proof that you're my mom!"
We laugh for a few more minutes, guffawing over Eileen’s pathetic last words on Earth “you have an ipod!” before I have to ask "so, why are you helping me? I thought you were mad at me. I thought you wanted to fight."
He lets out a long sigh. "Oh mummy, anger just makes time go slower. I’ve not spent all of these years chasing you for revenge. That’s so mortal! This was all I wanted!”
He smiles but I catch the faint scent of doubt under his words. He may want to believe what he’s just said, but he doesn’t know he’s not 100% there yet. No matter. We’ve got to much time between us to reconcile for anyone to be 100%, yet.
“So, what’s in that box? You ever going to open it?”
“It’s for Agnoletti. A gift.”
“Why didn’t you give it to him?”
“He refused it.”
“So why don’t you open it for yourself? What you got in there, the holy grail or something?”
“Not mine. Belongs to Zoltan if Agnoletti doesn’t want it.”
“Zoltan.. I know that name.”
“Yes, he lived in Paris. I found my way to him after leaving… after I abandoned you and your father. He trained me. I left him just before he died. He starved himself to death. I tried getting him to feed but, after 2,300 years he decided that he’d seen enough.”
“Zoltan… died? Really?” There’s a note of doubt in his voice. “Have you ever gone back to Paris to check?”
“Need a passport. I got a fake birth certificate and driver’s license, but passports are another story. They get out the proctoscopes when you come calling for one of them. Especially now. And I suppose I got set in my life, didn’t want to move on or face the many challenges that regular reinvention brings on.”
“They don’t chop off people’s heads in the town square, anymore. And to boot it hasn’t been a war zone in years! You’d like Paris, Mum! Hey, I know a fabulous forger in Chicago - top of the line! He can hook you up with a passport in a snap!”
“And if they don’t? We get carted off to jail.”
“And if that happens we’ll solve that problem the same way once borns have always gotten themselves out of tight places… we’ll EAT our way out!”
“I don’t like it.”
“Oh Come on! You’ve let Iowa get into your head! C’mon mum! We only live once!”
I have to hesitate, this could be fun or it could be trouble. But, Jack looks so excited so I concede. “ok!”
“Great!” he grins and drives a little faster.
Winding around on side streets to avoid any intersections that might have lights and, therefore, cameras, we drive to the furthest reach that one of Chicago’s Metra lines sends out into the countryside on spidery legs. We park the car on a residential street and walk to the station, hopping the next train downtown. As the grey, toothy skyline of Chicago rises out of flat land, Jack and I both start to sense it. We are coming to Chicago for more reasons that we originally bargained for.
Somewhere on the south side of Chicago, hiding away in the Robert Taylor homes, sits Artie. Little Artie Jones doesn’t socialize well with the other children. His teachers think it’s because he lives in the projects and his dad was a junkie who deserted the family after selling off everything they owned for dope. His momma figures it’s because of the mistreatment he gets at school. Sometimes she tell him “don’ be so SENSITIVE! Boy you can’ listen to what mess they be talkin’!” Some times she figures that he really just needs a father. It’s just that there’s few father figures to be had. At least where she is and how she sees the world. But on this day, little Artie Jones is hiding out in his room. Late winter sun filters through the dirty window and an acrid smell fills the air. He’s taken the cigarette lighter from his momma’s purse, which he employs in the sinister act of melting the face off of a GI Joe that he has stolen from the toy box at school. Under his bed he conceals the melted, exploded, tortured remains of many purloined action figure. More than a few of these remnants are covered with strange chew marks. Sometimes Artie will wake up with one of the dolls in his hand, looking like dog just ate on it but they don’t have a dog. Sometimes he dreams he’s a wild animal and he wakes up to find the sheets torn up. He hides the torn sheets and steals new ones from the lady next door when she hang hers out to dry.
Artie knows something about him ain’t right like the other kids but he can’t place it. The blame won’t squarely fit on any one source. And today, thirty miles to the south of the Robert Taylor homes, two once-borns approach to collect one of their own.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Nanowrimo - 19
I no longer fly in slumber. My imagination lost its strength long before my spirit. Dreams are not something one catalogs. They’re just markers on the journey. And just as one can travel along for miles and turn to wonder when the countryside suddenly became so dry, one day I wondered when I went from a windborne creature to runner and a swimmer. These boundaries look so definite on the maps drawn in retrospect, but I never see myself passing over them.
I run close to the ground, tall grass whipping at my face and feet spurred on to their fastest pace by the baying of hounds behind me. Men on horses seek only an afternoon of pleasure, riding about in the woods. Capturing the little red fox is merely a portion of the enjoyment they derive from getting out of the house and away from the women. For them my evasive moods are a puzzle and the dogs which torment me are the pawns sent out to do their bidding. Canine foot soldiers pursue the enemy through the countryside never realizing that the real threat to their soul and safety lies behind them, enthroned upon the horses. It’s cloaked in the political rhetoric of survival, but all war is merely a game the powerful play and there will always be wars, hunts, and those dogged pursuits to kill what is other or unknown until the day the powerful become supremely bored with the game of ages. Perhaps then they will simply go home and suck the life out of their own selves for once.
My legs are tiring. The dogs are sounding nearer. I zig zag through puddles and streams in attempts to throw them off. I’m gasping for air and can feel the blades of grass strike at the tongue hanging out of my mouth. I’m panting wildly but I refuse to stop. I refuse to give in to this misguided battle of beasts. At long last I see the small dark opening of a warren and dive in. The hounds bark and paw at the opening, still hoping to retrieve me, but I am quite beyond reach. Hunting trumpets call the beasts home leaving me, the little red refugee, in the dark.
As I return to the body in the bed from the fitful land of dreams the beastly teeth stay in my mouth. The urge is upon me even before I’ve woken up. I slide from the bed onto the floor, dripping with sweat and crawling on all fours. Around me the room spins like a bright red tunnel and I feel pulled along as if someone has put a hook into my belly and yanks me toward the prey like an unwilling catfish.
“Noooooo.” Is all the sound what comes out of my mouth. No, not now. I can’t do this now. Crawling down the stairs, panting and aching from a run, my mind is still mingled with the fox. “The fox is in the hen house… the fox is in the hen house,” keeps rolling through my brain like a taunt. I try to push myself backward on the steps and banisters but I’m unforgivably pulled downstairs. At the bottom I get a brief respite and the hot tunnel widens just big enough for just long enough for me to spy my iPod. I lunge at it, snatching it and stuffing the earphones into my ears quickly. My body rebels what it knows is coming next. It screams and lurches and yanks toward the door. My own fangs gnaw at my hand trying to stop it from turning the dials.
But I win. In seconds “The Fly” is blasting through my ears and the urge is losing its grasp just enough for me to stand upright and get to the kitchen. Pots and pans clatter their complaints that I so indelicately disturb their repose. But soon the skillet is on the stove and the bacon is on. Just the smell of it is making me pant. My teeth are still hanging out and my nerves writhe. Everything in my mind is saying “drink”. Every last cell in my body wants to drink. A drink would make all this struggle go away. Why, it’s been coming on more frequently. It used to be once a month or so, it’s almost daily, now.
“It’s not natural to starve yourself. Trust the urge! It’s there to keep you alive! It’s there to lessen the pain. You should let yourself feed.” A sinister voice whispers in my ear.
And once again I fight. I fight it all reaching for that one shred of humanity left in me. I listen to that one cell who rebels against the whole to say “NO!!!”
“No! I will not do it! I will not feed! I don’t WANT to stay alive! It’s my time to DIE!! If I feed all I will do is delay the inevitable reconning.” I shout into the air, into the tunnel constricting itself around me, pulling at me.
It comes back up in me in heaves and starts. By the time the bacon is done enough I need it so badly that I grab it from the frying pan with my bare hands and begin cramming the strips of meat, still sizzling and popping, into my mouth. Almost done, I breathe, almost done.
Just then a voice sounds from behind me. “You have an iPod!” I turn to see Eileen, who has arrived early to finish the paperwork that went neglected yesterday afternoon when we both became highly engrossed by my antiques.
And she beholds me, still wearing sweaty bed clothes, bacon grease dripping down my chin and holding the iPod aloft. And then I realize what else she sees. Behold, the fangs of the vampire and the clouded over eyes of one lost to another dimension. Her eyes lock on my face and I watch her puzzlement yield to horrified disbelief.
“You!”
It’s the only word she gets out. It’s the last word this mortal will utter on the earthly plane. In a second I’m on her. My teeth dig in with purpose and the sweet nectar rolls down my throat. She’s been eating doughnuts and coffee, had ham for dinner last night with mashed potatoes and creamed corn. The mélange makes a heady wine. Well before she’s fully dead I feel the high coming on. Out of possession of my own senses and better thinking I gulp all 3 liters down like a thirsty man at his first visit to an oasis.
When it’s done and the white body lay prone halfway between the living room and the kitchen my ecstasy is uncontrollable. With new vigor and strength pumping through them my limbs thrash and jump about. Their newfound power is exerted upon any object or surface that might wish to resist. The smashing feels good.
After an hour of the high, most of which I barely remember, I sit on the floor of the living room, surveying the damage. Everything, absolutely everything in the house is broken. Banisters, bookshelves, chairs all make heaps of tinder on the floor. The couches are torn open as if by a clawed beast. The windows are smashed. I look slowly over the piles of stuffing, fabric, books, busted wood, kettles whose handles have been ripped off, chards of glass that used to be fine pieces, ripped up paintings and the white heap of body that used to live and breathe and be Eileen. It slowly dawns on me what I’ve just done. And then I rest my head back to sob.
“There’s something that’s been in their blood since the 1950’s that produces these particularly violent states of post feed highs.” A voice says above me. I hear the clunking of heavy boots making their way through the debris.
“Jack”
“Some say its food additives. But I have another theory.”
“I was so afraid that you would kill. But then I did it. I did this horrible thing!”
“All the surviving superpowers after World War II performed extensive nuclear testing in the 1950’s. Thousands of bombs exploded in the atmosphere. The planet was a Petri dish for what perfect method would kill the best. All that nuclear activity changed the carbon in the atmosphere from C-12 to C-14. This essentially morphed the chemistry of a fundamental building block to all life on this planet. And now, here is part of the result.” He steps over an upturned coffee table and comes to crouch in front of me. The morning haze hits his face and in his eyes I see my own brilliant green color. “Some call it the nuclear high, which I must say is apt. It sure looks like a bomb went off in here.”
“I didn’t want to do this!” I’m simply sobbing uncontrollably and the words have to heave their way out of my throat. “I was so mad at you about Jones. I was so worried that you would kill. I was so worried for the people around here.”
“I know! I know.” He puts a hand up to my mouth to silence my blubbering ramble. “But it wasn’t me that brought you to this. It was your own nature. And your nature isn’t bad. Take into your own heart some of those sermons you reassure the congregation with.” As he says this I start bawling again. “Oh Mum.”
He leans forward and puts his arms around me. We settle there for a great while, just rocking back and forth.
“We have to go, now. He says eventually, releasing my hold. Get dressed. Pack a valise. We’re leaving.”
“Where on earth am I going to go? What do I do now?”
Just pack! He orders. And I bound up the stairs with an odd strength to collect a few things quickly. I pull an older bag from the back of the closet knowing that the police will instantly remark on the disappearance of a new one. For some reason I keep thinking of how I’ll talk around this, but it’s no use. Jack only started what I just did a perfectly good job of finishing. I can’t come back here, not anymore. Destroyed house or no, I’m the prime suspect, public enemy number one.
At the door I turn back. “Wait!”
“What IS it? Mum, we have to hurry up!”
I race back into the house and from the piles of wreckage where a bookshelf once was I retrieve a brown package, tied with string.
“What’s that?” Jack asks
“A gift for someone that I’ve been carrying.”
“Gods! The once born can be such packrats!”
“Well, there’s comfort in stuff, sometimes.”
He scoffs and jumps into the driver’s seat of my car. “Get in the back and get down. We don’t want someone spying you leaving.”
“Where are we going?” I ask, crouched behind him. “What do I do now?”
“You’re going to reinvent yourself, Mummy! You’ve been stable for too long!”
I feel the car skid around on the gravel. The stones crunch and hiss as if to say “go on now!”
I run close to the ground, tall grass whipping at my face and feet spurred on to their fastest pace by the baying of hounds behind me. Men on horses seek only an afternoon of pleasure, riding about in the woods. Capturing the little red fox is merely a portion of the enjoyment they derive from getting out of the house and away from the women. For them my evasive moods are a puzzle and the dogs which torment me are the pawns sent out to do their bidding. Canine foot soldiers pursue the enemy through the countryside never realizing that the real threat to their soul and safety lies behind them, enthroned upon the horses. It’s cloaked in the political rhetoric of survival, but all war is merely a game the powerful play and there will always be wars, hunts, and those dogged pursuits to kill what is other or unknown until the day the powerful become supremely bored with the game of ages. Perhaps then they will simply go home and suck the life out of their own selves for once.
My legs are tiring. The dogs are sounding nearer. I zig zag through puddles and streams in attempts to throw them off. I’m gasping for air and can feel the blades of grass strike at the tongue hanging out of my mouth. I’m panting wildly but I refuse to stop. I refuse to give in to this misguided battle of beasts. At long last I see the small dark opening of a warren and dive in. The hounds bark and paw at the opening, still hoping to retrieve me, but I am quite beyond reach. Hunting trumpets call the beasts home leaving me, the little red refugee, in the dark.
As I return to the body in the bed from the fitful land of dreams the beastly teeth stay in my mouth. The urge is upon me even before I’ve woken up. I slide from the bed onto the floor, dripping with sweat and crawling on all fours. Around me the room spins like a bright red tunnel and I feel pulled along as if someone has put a hook into my belly and yanks me toward the prey like an unwilling catfish.
“Noooooo.” Is all the sound what comes out of my mouth. No, not now. I can’t do this now. Crawling down the stairs, panting and aching from a run, my mind is still mingled with the fox. “The fox is in the hen house… the fox is in the hen house,” keeps rolling through my brain like a taunt. I try to push myself backward on the steps and banisters but I’m unforgivably pulled downstairs. At the bottom I get a brief respite and the hot tunnel widens just big enough for just long enough for me to spy my iPod. I lunge at it, snatching it and stuffing the earphones into my ears quickly. My body rebels what it knows is coming next. It screams and lurches and yanks toward the door. My own fangs gnaw at my hand trying to stop it from turning the dials.
But I win. In seconds “The Fly” is blasting through my ears and the urge is losing its grasp just enough for me to stand upright and get to the kitchen. Pots and pans clatter their complaints that I so indelicately disturb their repose. But soon the skillet is on the stove and the bacon is on. Just the smell of it is making me pant. My teeth are still hanging out and my nerves writhe. Everything in my mind is saying “drink”. Every last cell in my body wants to drink. A drink would make all this struggle go away. Why, it’s been coming on more frequently. It used to be once a month or so, it’s almost daily, now.
“It’s not natural to starve yourself. Trust the urge! It’s there to keep you alive! It’s there to lessen the pain. You should let yourself feed.” A sinister voice whispers in my ear.
And once again I fight. I fight it all reaching for that one shred of humanity left in me. I listen to that one cell who rebels against the whole to say “NO!!!”
“No! I will not do it! I will not feed! I don’t WANT to stay alive! It’s my time to DIE!! If I feed all I will do is delay the inevitable reconning.” I shout into the air, into the tunnel constricting itself around me, pulling at me.
It comes back up in me in heaves and starts. By the time the bacon is done enough I need it so badly that I grab it from the frying pan with my bare hands and begin cramming the strips of meat, still sizzling and popping, into my mouth. Almost done, I breathe, almost done.
Just then a voice sounds from behind me. “You have an iPod!” I turn to see Eileen, who has arrived early to finish the paperwork that went neglected yesterday afternoon when we both became highly engrossed by my antiques.
And she beholds me, still wearing sweaty bed clothes, bacon grease dripping down my chin and holding the iPod aloft. And then I realize what else she sees. Behold, the fangs of the vampire and the clouded over eyes of one lost to another dimension. Her eyes lock on my face and I watch her puzzlement yield to horrified disbelief.
“You!”
It’s the only word she gets out. It’s the last word this mortal will utter on the earthly plane. In a second I’m on her. My teeth dig in with purpose and the sweet nectar rolls down my throat. She’s been eating doughnuts and coffee, had ham for dinner last night with mashed potatoes and creamed corn. The mélange makes a heady wine. Well before she’s fully dead I feel the high coming on. Out of possession of my own senses and better thinking I gulp all 3 liters down like a thirsty man at his first visit to an oasis.
When it’s done and the white body lay prone halfway between the living room and the kitchen my ecstasy is uncontrollable. With new vigor and strength pumping through them my limbs thrash and jump about. Their newfound power is exerted upon any object or surface that might wish to resist. The smashing feels good.
After an hour of the high, most of which I barely remember, I sit on the floor of the living room, surveying the damage. Everything, absolutely everything in the house is broken. Banisters, bookshelves, chairs all make heaps of tinder on the floor. The couches are torn open as if by a clawed beast. The windows are smashed. I look slowly over the piles of stuffing, fabric, books, busted wood, kettles whose handles have been ripped off, chards of glass that used to be fine pieces, ripped up paintings and the white heap of body that used to live and breathe and be Eileen. It slowly dawns on me what I’ve just done. And then I rest my head back to sob.
“There’s something that’s been in their blood since the 1950’s that produces these particularly violent states of post feed highs.” A voice says above me. I hear the clunking of heavy boots making their way through the debris.
“Jack”
“Some say its food additives. But I have another theory.”
“I was so afraid that you would kill. But then I did it. I did this horrible thing!”
“All the surviving superpowers after World War II performed extensive nuclear testing in the 1950’s. Thousands of bombs exploded in the atmosphere. The planet was a Petri dish for what perfect method would kill the best. All that nuclear activity changed the carbon in the atmosphere from C-12 to C-14. This essentially morphed the chemistry of a fundamental building block to all life on this planet. And now, here is part of the result.” He steps over an upturned coffee table and comes to crouch in front of me. The morning haze hits his face and in his eyes I see my own brilliant green color. “Some call it the nuclear high, which I must say is apt. It sure looks like a bomb went off in here.”
“I didn’t want to do this!” I’m simply sobbing uncontrollably and the words have to heave their way out of my throat. “I was so mad at you about Jones. I was so worried that you would kill. I was so worried for the people around here.”
“I know! I know.” He puts a hand up to my mouth to silence my blubbering ramble. “But it wasn’t me that brought you to this. It was your own nature. And your nature isn’t bad. Take into your own heart some of those sermons you reassure the congregation with.” As he says this I start bawling again. “Oh Mum.”
He leans forward and puts his arms around me. We settle there for a great while, just rocking back and forth.
“We have to go, now. He says eventually, releasing my hold. Get dressed. Pack a valise. We’re leaving.”
“Where on earth am I going to go? What do I do now?”
Just pack! He orders. And I bound up the stairs with an odd strength to collect a few things quickly. I pull an older bag from the back of the closet knowing that the police will instantly remark on the disappearance of a new one. For some reason I keep thinking of how I’ll talk around this, but it’s no use. Jack only started what I just did a perfectly good job of finishing. I can’t come back here, not anymore. Destroyed house or no, I’m the prime suspect, public enemy number one.
At the door I turn back. “Wait!”
“What IS it? Mum, we have to hurry up!”
I race back into the house and from the piles of wreckage where a bookshelf once was I retrieve a brown package, tied with string.
“What’s that?” Jack asks
“A gift for someone that I’ve been carrying.”
“Gods! The once born can be such packrats!”
“Well, there’s comfort in stuff, sometimes.”
He scoffs and jumps into the driver’s seat of my car. “Get in the back and get down. We don’t want someone spying you leaving.”
“Where are we going?” I ask, crouched behind him. “What do I do now?”
“You’re going to reinvent yourself, Mummy! You’ve been stable for too long!”
I feel the car skid around on the gravel. The stones crunch and hiss as if to say “go on now!”
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