The Young Man and the Lake

 

The Young Man and the Lake

A Story of Redemption

He was a young man who fished from a rental rowboat on a small lake fed by the effluent from a sewer plant and he had gone eight minutes without taking a fish. In the first four minutes a boa constrictor had been with him, but after four minutes, without catching a fish, the boa constrictor told the young man he was as unlucky as Saul, which is the worst form of unlucky, and left. The boat continued to bob up and down with every flush of a toilet. The young man continued to fish, too embarrassed to return to the marina without a catch. The sun glared down from a cloudless sky. The young man dipped his hat in the water and sighed. He looked across the lagoon and into the trees, but he could think only of the fish that might be swimming beneath his boat.

His name was Lorenzo, and he

How to Recognize an Old Logger

 How to Recognize an Old Logger

They have a splintered view of things

and walk with a wooden gait.

Their tongues are know to burn

under the heat of words and

they love kindling

always carry a knife

to whittle away at things,

and people.

They smell of sawdust, fir sap,

tobacco, gasoline, and oil.

Their limbs are knotted.

There are burls

at each knee and elbow.

They worship Paul Bunyan.

Their children receive

wooden toys for Christmas.

If in doubt,

look for Spanish moss on the

north side of their faces,

or listen for termites

in their teeth.

Watch their eyes outgrow their faces

at any mention of the spotted owl.

Few are known to reach the age

of old growth -

they prefer it that way.

from The Whinkla Chronicles

The Whinkla Chronicles

Yesterday, many of my most recent fears were regretfully realized when I stumbled across a cache of partially burned papers buried in one of the fire pits Whinkla uses on Thomas Hardy night. l had been taking his dog Alexis for a walk along the irrigation ditch that runs across the rear of his property, and having no though at all about anything whatsoever except noting the clarity of the evening sky something below the bank caught my attention. Calling the dog to heel I scampered down the muddy incline to investigate. It was a bundle of tightly rolled pages of yellow paper, and although the pages were matted from soaking in water the text was still quite legible. I glanced at the topmost page:

Notes on the Synthanation of Crhontium Silate

and Pltaferonic Acid

(extrapolated from the analysis of results

obtained from experiments conducted

between March 27 and July 15 2007)

NOT FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION

and thought immediately of rekindling the fire of Guy Fawkes.

After reading the cover sheet I decided not to read any further but to take the bundle of musty paper home to dry, and if possible retrieve from the soggy wad what information I could, but for what purpose I had no idea. Should I discover something untoward about my friend Whinkla would this mark me as a potential betrayer? Why did I think this handful of fool scrap might be of any importance? And were these pages really in Whinkla’s hand? Why didn't I simply raise my eyes to the top of the nearby Douglas firs, and the timeless firmament, which was my wont, and go home?

There were stars enough in the sky on any night to satisfy anyone's curiosity, but, on this night my interest in the papers was piqued beyond any stellar wonderings. I wrapped the manuscript in my jacket and tucked it carefully beneath a thatch of heather, and whistled my way back to Whinkla's cabin. After a glass of a remarkable Cabernet and a potpourri of casual literary talk I made my anxious way back to retrieve the manuscript. It pained me to decline Whinkla's kind and very rare offer to walk me to the edge of the dry lake and see me safely on my way home. He had never done this before.

I pressed my hand against my stomach where I had hidden the papers and . . .

The Bus

 The Bus

It had been a long day, beginning in the noisy 4 am marketplace of Santo Domingo, and now, in the darkness of early evening his destination was still more than three hours away. The road inland from Santo Domingo was filed with potholes, some deeper than his axles, as it had been since the first time he was driven over it more than five years before. He remembered that first encounter, the two flat tires, and the slow, embarrassing tow to Ciudad de Valles. The road had not improved. It was only that Leon. the driver, had adjusted to the horrible conditions that he still made the twice-a-week journey.

It had been a long day, which was not to say he was complaining. He had been built for work, and required only a little rest once in a while, gasoline to fuel his heart, oil to keep his joints moving quietly, and a caring driver to assure his happiness. But as he had grown older - just how old was he, he wondered, It seemed the hills were just a little steeper and the heat and cold more noticeable. His joints creaked despite the grease and oil, and his body ached more often than it once did, and the unforeseen jolting bumps in the roadway gave him a headache, still, it could be worse he told himself.

They had passed through Pedro Santos and were nearing the turnoff to San Juan del Rio where he knew the road would deteriorate even further. Then, perhaps for contrast, and to lift his spirits, he thought about the time he had transported a group of European tourists to Mexico City. On highway 85 he had shown all of them how his tires could hum.

During the last hours of the journey he had time to consider his passengers. The young couple, no more than teenagers, who had flagged him down just south of Ciudad de Valles. They carried one tattered. brown leather suitcase held together with a length of hemp, and a net bag filled with overripe oranges. It was obvious they were in love, perhaps recently married, or running away to get married. They had seated themselves toward the rear of the bus and when the old man with the parrot got off at El Abra they had taken his place in the back seat.

He could feel the warmth of their bodies pressing together as they fought against sleep. And there was the noisy family occupying four seats near his middle, two on each side of the aisle. Behind them were their homemade wooden crates, one holding two bedraggled chickens, and another a young turkey. In another wooden box a small pig grunted and squealed. Directly behind the driver was a middle aged man who cradled in his lap a wicker cage holding five bright canaries. Across the aisle a middle-aged American couple, on their way to experience the strange and surrealistic concrete garden at Los Posas, dozed and listened to music written in an unknown tongue. Almost everyone was asleep. Only Leon and himself were alert and watching.

As they passed Tlalcolteno and turned on to Calle 5 de Mayo Sur he felt a few raindrops speckle his windshield. They were climbing into the Sierra Gorda mountains now, toward the town of Xilitla, and in a half an hour, maybe less, he would be resting quietly behind Leon's house as the passengers he had carefully cradled picked up their baggage and ambled off into the darkness to continue what was left of their lives.

Washing Dishes For The Millennium

Washing Dishes For The Millennium

The sink was overflowing with greasy dishes from an unremembered meal and it seemed like a good idea at the time to wash them. Or was that a bad idea? Who could tell? I decided to wash them, having only two options. But as I filled the cracked enamel sink with hot water, almost steam, the cups and saucers, plates and bowls began to move about and break apart. They fragmented into salmon-coloured, fish-shaped pieces that darted around in the dish water like pike-hunted perch.

 

I blinked and found myself gazing out the two-paned kitchen window. I could see dawn was arriving, or perhaps it wasn't. Who could tell? Had I been washing dishes all afternoon? All evening? In the sink the salmon continued to frolic and disintegrate into smaller and smaller fry. I thought how happy they might have been had they been real salmon, or even sardines, and able, under their own cognitive powers, to travel down the dark drain on an adventure worthy of Huck and Jim, or perhaps leap up the dripping water, into the faucet and fin their way back, through mists and times to the place of their birth. Only they didn’t, they continued to deny whatever identity they might have had and continuing dissolving into a sandy mud that covered the bottom of my sink. I remember, I was upset, my cast iron skillet wasn’t dirty. I could have put this abrasive product to productive use, as a cleanser. I watched the school of salmon fry swimming back and forth, rubbing their granular, rough-scaled bellies against the bottom of my skillet and pulled the plug. I watched the salmon disappear down the drain.

Or was that simply gritty clay?

Who could tell?

A Little About Kleadrap

 A Little About Kleadrap

I suppose I ought to tell you a little more about Kleadrap. As I said earlier, it's a small town. The main street runs east and west with perhaps five or six streets intersecting at a strange angle. It seems the surveyor who laid out the grid for the town was new at the game and failed to take into account the magnetic declination for the area, roughly 25 degrees. As a result all the cross streets intersect the main business street at something greater or less than 90 degrees. Each block thereby became a parallelogram. To compound matters, when the early pioneers constructed their homes they measured from the center of the nearby cross streets to lay out the foundations of their homes rather than employ the 3:4:5 ratio. As a result all the buildings in Kleadrap are parallelograms. The one time visitor may not be aware of this as the difference is slight and as all buildings in Kleadrap conform to this aberration it is not particularly noticeable. Visitors may leave with a nagging sense that something didn’t seem quite right but be unable to identify the reason for their unease. Of course the inhabitants are made aware of this aberration every time they lay down tile or wall-to-wall carpeting. None of the walls in these homes meet at a right angle.

Kleadrap has a population of around 600 people, a few more during the summer and fall when picking season (beets, rutabagas, and onions) is in full swing.

Main street accommodates one market, one gasoline station, one tavern, two gift shops, a post office, and two other buildings that are vacant most of the time, or house various businesses with a shelf life of only a few months.

Tax time sees and accountant move in and rent one of the apartments above the tavern, and once in a while a local, or occasionally an out-of-state, artist sets up shop, but there are too few people in the community, either permanent or transient to make any business thrive.

This was not always so. An opera house once stood at the corner of Third and A street. A twelve-grade school house, located next to the falling-down grange building, graduated twenty-seven classes over twenty-seven years. Now only the discovery of an agate marble, or tip from a spinning top indicates the activity that once took place.

Time dissolves everything, even memories.

Whistling Dixie for Beckett

 Whistling Dixie for Beckett

We have put the ghosts to bed and tucked them in. Alice will climb the stairs and sing them a lullaby and kiss their formless, gossamer foreheads. I will yank the cork from another bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and get a fresh glass from the dusty cupboard. Time is whistling Dixie in the withered leaves of the trees outside the sliding glass door. From a neighbor’s field of old growth conifers our resident owl sings for its supper; hoots religiously, as it does every evening, as if nothing of significance has happened in the world since yesterday to pause its mournful, haunting cries. Ritual can become dogma.

I hear the ghosts turning in their sheets and fluffing-up their pillows. The darkness grows deeper, longer. The cabernet descends as I raise my glass.

There was a time in my life when I considered becoming human, or at least attempting a facsimile. That urge passed quickly.

Winter continues, despite my best effort to ignore it.

My discontent is meaningless, but no less real. I wait.

The only sunshine available is behind my eyes, and I have many anxious seeds.