As these years passed the people below talked about the birds and their singing. They talked about why they were there, they talked about the songs they sang. At some point, nobody knows when, the people below decided that the birds were there because the empire was strong. When the empire fell was when the birds would leave, and not a moment sooner. At the time it was a happy thought, a reassuring thought: the birds had been there since the people below could remember, since their parents could remember, since their grandparents. The birds would always be there, and so would the empire.

The people below were safe, and the birds sang to them.

In the years that passed the empire went to war, as empires are wont to do. Its kings donned violet capes and weighty helmets, riding horses into battle after battle. Some battles were won, some battles were lost. The empire won the war. And the war after that. And the war after that.

In the towers of the palace, the white birds flocked and sang, and the empire was safe.

Among the people below no one really knew what had happened. They were, for the most part, happy. Their kings fought wars, took wives, had children. The empire was enormous, stretching thousands of miles in every direction… so huge that it had to be sectioned off and given to local governments to rule over. There was no date recorded in a history book. There was no definitive moment. No great defeat. No mass invasion. One day the birds were just gone.

The people below had never known a time without birds overhead. They blinked in the sun like new fawns, searching for the raucous feathered ceiling under which generations had lived out their lives. For weeks the center of the empire fell into unease, which spread gradually to outlying regions.

Until one day the birds were back. But they didn’t flock, and didn’t sing. They fumbled through the air silently, as if searching for something, and they disappeared one by one until by nightfall none were left. The next day the same thing happened, the birds confused, silent, searching, disappearing by nightfall.

Inside the palace, a young boy rose every morning under cover of darkness, under cover of secrecy. He took up his net and he took up his sack, and went out into the world. When the white birds abandoned the towers of the palace, the empire would fall. His job was to keep the towers filled with birds, and every day they disappeared by nightfall.

______
In England there’s a legend that the British empire won’t fall until there are no ravens remaining in the Tower of London. Ravens remain, but their wings are clipped.

“Hello my Canaanite friend. May your journey home be possible.”

“Hello my Nubian friend,” replied the other. “May your revolts be successful.”

The old man scratched the top of his foot with the stick, then continued his lines in the sand. The other brushed his sleeve across his forehead, and then spoke.

“May I sit on this small rise in your company for a short time? For my burden is heavy, and my back resents the load.”

“You are welcome to sit, my friend. Perhaps you will tell me of your travels, and why you carry such a burden.”

The young man swung his bundle off his shoulder, letting it down on the ground quickly, but with care. The contents clunked and rattled as they adjusted to the movement. He sat down with a grunt.

“Many thanks, my friend. May you find pleasant shade this evening, for your welcome.”

“My only shade is my house, my friend, and my wife takes care that it should not be pleasant. But I thank you. May your burden be less tiresome.”

The young man gave a nod. “Would that it could be so. But the weight lies not only on my back, but on my heart. In the bundle are treasures from my household. I walk this way that I might find a quiet place to bury them.”

The old man raised an eyebrow, and turned his glance to the bundle on the ground between them. He absentmindedly poked at his foot with the stick.

“Surely you do not bury wealth, my Canaanite friend?”

“Only the wealth of my soul, my Nubian friend. In this bundle are my household gods, the protectors of my shade, now to protect no longer. Have you not heard news, my friend?”

The old man pursed his lips, tugged on his left earlobe. “If it is recent, I have not heard. I spend my days on this rock, where there is no shade, and also no wife. Tell me of this news.”

“Word has spread. The Pharaoh Akhenaton–” He paused as both men turned their heads and spat onto the ground “–is enamored of but one god, Aton. It is said that all others are being destroyed, and they are now taboo among all peoples. There is only Aton, and all other deities must succumb to his awesome presence, and be swept away.”

“Ah, and so you are doing the sweeping.”

The younger man nodded. “I will remember the spot of burial, and perhaps things will change, and my gods will adorn my house once more.”

The older man lowered his eyelids a fraction. “I sense hope in you, a rare quality. Have you perhaps more to tell?”

The young man opened his mouth to answer, and then cursed under his breath. “An Egyptian approaches, silence.”

The older man made lines in the sand with his stick, watching the Egyptian. His sudden loud voice made the younger man startle slightly. “No no, my friend, my love and reverence for Aton surpasses that even of yours, in all your piety.”

The Egyptian turned his head.

The young man answered quickly: “I must dispute your claim, my friend. Praise for Aton is on my lips when I close my eyes to sleep, and there still when I wake at his transfigured presence in the morning.”

The Egyptian slowed his walk.

“But,” continued the older man, “I say prayers to my King, my lord, my pantheon, my Sun-god, seven times seven times as often as I draw breath. My admiration is as deep as the sea.”

The Egyptian glanced behind him.

“See this sand, the little individual pieces,” replied the younger, “if one could count how many hymns I have written in reverence to Aton, they would be more numerous than all the sand in all of Egypt. For my love for Aton–”

The Egyptian spat on the ground, and continued walking, past the rise, away out of sight.

The older man rubbed his chin. “A most interesting response.”

The younger man kept his eyes on the place where he had last seen the Egyptian. “Will you revolt soon?”

“Perhaps,” the older replied. “Perhaps. A band of men, my son included, has already begun travel to Jerusalem, to see what can be seen. They shall pilfer. There was bold talk of attacking the house of the Prince himself, we shall see what comes of it when they return.”

“Have you no fear of a reaction from the Pharaoh?” Both men turned and spat.

“There is always risk. It shall not deter us. I feel at this time the risk perhaps is smaller than at other times.”

The younger man nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps you are right. He seems preoccupied with his one god, and has built a city where he might worship both day and night. Well,” he stood up with a grunt, brushed sand off his backside, and bent to pick up his bundle. “I thank you, my Nubian friend, for your company on this rock.”
“It does not move, my Canaanite friend, and neither do I. You are welcome to return if you are in need of rest.”

“My thanks. Perhaps when I am finished with my digging and walk back this way, I will sit for awhile longer.”

I spent most of my summers barefoot, because sweating inside your shoes is the most disgusting feeling I knew of. It still is. Everyone wore shoes that year, though. Even the really tough kids couldn’t walk on the hot sidewalk with no shoes.

My neighbour Chloe and I spent all summer together, but we only had enough energy to do two things: swimming and lying in the shade. I remember once she and I walked through the woods looking for a stream. We heard that it was glacier run off. Cold enough to give you hypothermia. Cold enough to turn your feet blue. Cold enough to freeze you insides so bad you could never digest food right, or bear children.

We were totally psyched.

In the forest we finally freed our feet of their shoe-shaped bonds on the smooth dirt paths. It was softer and cooler than the pavement. We watched our steps carefully for stones and thistles. Every now and again we stopped to proclaim over some found treasure. Shattered glasses, broken jewellery and scribbled shopping lists filled our pockets. We never did any thing with them, we just kept them. In addition to our usual finds, Chloe discovered something bizarre. There was a magazine, just off the path. The cover portrayed a tangle of sweaty limbs, which could only lead the viewer to believe that the people in the middle were having a pretty good time. Right after picking it up, she dropped it.

“Is it dirty?” She asked.

I gave her a look, “Obviously.”

“No, not—” she blushed, “Not dirty like boobies dirty. Crud and bugs dirty.”

I shook the pages. Several fat earwigs scattered to the ground. “No,” I said.

We started to look at it, but I didn’t like it. It made me want to be somewhere else. I tried to make her throw it back in the bushes, but instead she tucked it under her arm and kept walking. Eventually, we found the stream, but it was only a trickle. It wasn’t even that cold. There was no reason to stay long, but we did anyways. We sat in the woods for a long time, just thinking.

Chloe snuck the magazine into the house wrapped in her towel. Later we cracked an egg on the sidewalk and watched the foggy parts turn white.

It was the hottest summer ever.

Are you older than I am? I think you’re younger. You just seem older. We meet in the train station. We’re both going to Brooklyn. I need to pick up some food for my sister in Little Italy, and you’re just going home. I guess I look pretty tired, because you break the cardinal rule of Grand Central and ask me if I’m okay. I look at a rat crawling across the tracks ten feet from me, and I say that I’m fine.

The train station benches in New York have little dividers between the seats. We’re so intent on anonymity in this city, we can’t even let our legs touch when sit next to each other. If that isn’t enough, most people leave a seat between them and the next person. I guess it’s kind of like the urinal rule. Don’t make small talk with the man you pee with. You sit next to me. You sit like a catcher, waiting for his first strike, knees so far apart that one of yours bump one of mine. I tuck mine closer together.

The train is nothing like the station. We pack ourselves in so tightly our eyes pop, but we just stare straight ahead. You can tell the tourists from the rest of us because they look around on the subway. Sometimes they try to make eye contact, and joke about how where they come from subway is just a sandwich. You and I hold on to the same bar, pressed together, gyrating our pelvises with the swing of the train. It’s not as sexy as it sounds. It’s just what you do to keep from falling over onto the woman with the trash sack full of soda cans.

When I walk up the stairs onto the street I like to pretend that the earth is giving birth to me. At first there’s only fluorescent lights and too many bodies. Then it gets darker for a moment, and the only way you can tell you’re surrounded is by the pressure and the sound. The sound is deafening. Footsteps and breathing and the crying of infants. And then there’s the light. Christmas lights wind around trellis façades, like so many champagne grape light bulbs. The smell of garlic and fat over heat is nearly suffocating. And a phone number tucked into my back pocket.

Is it yours?

I hurry into the restaurant and get the eggplant parmigiana for my sister. She won’t eat anything else. Usually the hospital won’t let food from the outside come in, but right now they’ll do anything to keep her eating. She used to look like our mother, but not anymore. Her face is always dry, even when she cries. She and I used to be so close, but now I only talk to her about what’s on TV. There’s nothing else to talk about. I won’t say the things the doctors tell me, because if I don’t say them, maybe they won’t happen.

Before I know it, I’m back on the train, and you’re not. You were just a face and a pair of knees to me, but you were the best thing that happened all day. I try to call the number, but not even magic works underground. Besides, the splashing of air of the side of the trains would have drowned you out.

Back in the hospital I give my sister tiny bites, and she throws them up. I put my hands over hers and ask her what Oprah has said lately. She cries as I give her sips of apple juice. She asks me to braid her hair, but she doesn’t have it anymore. I start to clear the wilted flowers from her night stand and she stops me. She says she has too much in common with the dead flowers to throw them away. It’s my turn to cry.

My apartment is empty. I enter tired and dazed after the six flight walk I had to take to get there. It’s almost three am. I stay up later and later every night, trying to synchronise my waking hours with my sister’s. She sleeps longer every day, and I drink another cup of coffee.

In the morning I call in sick, and then I call you. You sound half asleep, so I check my watch. Eleven. I ask your name and you don’t answer, asking mine instead. I let you have it. I wasn’t using it anyways. You ask me to meet you in the park. I go.

The park is green. I used to think it was something really special. So much grass. Then I learned that grass just grows everywhere on its own, and that the incredible thing about this city is the buildings. The skyline still seems sort of broken after ground zero. The green stumps of buildings that pop up in its stead are nothing to the two sequoias who used to stand there. I look up and you break my horizon in half. The reservoir is on one side of you, the city on the other. I ask why you left me your number. You ask why I called it.

When we talk about our meeting, you tell me that something about me seemed different, and I say I’m the normal one. We assign ourselves titles in every setting: smart, dashing, tall, interesting—or, if you’re me—stable, boring, and average. You laugh at me and give me a candied nut. I say I’m allergic.

Later my sister asks what life is like outside, and I tell her about my day with you. She smiles and asks if I’m in love, and I say no. She asks if mom knows about you, and I say no. I don’t tell her that our mother is dead. Instead I tell her that on Canal Street, you were able to haggle a pair of twenty dollar sunglasses down to three dollars and fifty cents. I show her a picture of you making a face on my cell phone and she laughs. She asks again if I’m in love, and I say no. She doesn’t cry when I go, but her goodbye seems a little weaker than it was the day before. I kiss her where her eyebrow should be and tell her I’ll bring her new flowers tomorrow. Instead she asks me to bring you.

I hardly know you, and I don’t want you to meet my sister. This is the first thing I say to you on the third time we meet. You’re taken aback. I say that I don’t want you to meet her, but that she wants to meet you. I tell you the whole story, bracing you for impact. You tell me you had cancer once, and now you only have one testicle. You say that in the locker room at the gym you tell people you were hit by a bomb in Iraq. You never went to Iraq.

My sister is pale, but seems happy. She asks me again if I’m in love and I blush because you can hear her. I say not today, and she says she’ll wait. She’s always been good like that. Patient.

After a while she falls asleep and you and I play cat’s cradle. We talk about where we work and what we want to do with our lives. You pinch the wrong Xs and our cradle turns into tangled string. You apologize and I forgive you. I point out that this wasn’t what I pictured for a second date anyways, and that you can’t make it much worse. You kiss me and ask me if you can make it better, and after a moment I say yes. When we leave my sister asks you if you’re in love. You say that she’ll just have to wait and see.

You tell me on the train home that when you were sick you held on to see what would happen on Dawson’s Creek. I say that’s a terrible reason to go on living, and you look away and say it was enough. I feel like I’ve known you forever. I tell you so. You wrap your hand around mine on the pole we’re both clinging to, and say that we have. That we’ve been friends from birth, that we just never knew it. We’re still holding hands when we walk up the stairs to the sidewalk.

I wake up next to you. You say good morning and tell me that there’s coffee in the kitchen. I tell you you’re a real gentleman, letting me crash at your place with no pressure, and you kiss me again. Eating breakfast across from you is nice. I feel like I’m watching a time lapse video of grass as I see your stubble grow. You make scrambled eggs and I try to decline. I tell you how much I hate rich food. You make them with just salt and pepper, and no cheese. I burn my hands making you toast.

This is what my day becomes. I hop between you and her. Sometimes you follow me. You seem more like her brother than I do. She draws flowers on the backs of your hands and up your wrists. You tell her the intricacies of Dawson’s Creek. I watch you and think of what to say. Nothing comes to mind. Sometimes you read her the Chronicles of Narnia. She used to get older in this hospital, but now she’s getting younger. My older sister is a child, fragile and happy, mouth sticky from chewing gum and eyes glazed. Her bites get smaller, and every day more eggplant parmigiana is left in the takeaway box. She’s weaker now than ever. When we say goodbye she asks if we’re in love and I say yes, just as you say maybe.

I’ve known you for one week.

You say you like this apartment because you get a workout on the way up and an adrenaline rush on the way down. You always slide down the rail instead of walking like a normal person. You call it my hobbit hole, because it’s smaller than your place, and because I’m so much shorter than you. You call me little man, when you call me. This apartment could be so much more than it is, I say. Before I know it the empty room I’ve been trying to rent is full of photos. You tape them up in rows, and soon I can’t see the paint. They range in quality from poor to breath-taking. Among the the cityscapes and still life hangs a portrait of my sister in muted tones. At least, I think it’s meant to be muted. She and the hospital gown are both so pale it’s hard to see. She looks like an angel. A saint, even.

When I talk to her I pretend her mind isn’t going. The doctors say I shouldn’t hope for too much. If not for you I wouldn’t. But here you are, shaking up my world. Someone like you can ruin the healthy pessimism in a person. She always asks for you these days, and she gets your name wrong every time. When she does see you, she thinks you’re me, or our father, or our old neighbour with the cats. But you read to her anyways. She doesn’t draw on your hands anymore. I ask her what’s been on Oprah and she says Oprah is dead, just before singing God Save The Queen.

When we say goodbye she looks at the wall. Sometimes she answers me.

The spare room is called the gallery now. You commission my sister to fill a book with flowers, and you papier-mâché her drawing over a coffee table. There are two armchairs in there. They’re upholstered in white canvas. You ask me to paint them, and I say no. You call me a loveable liar, when you call me. You lead me into the room and give me a brush. You cross your arms and say you won’t leave until I paint. I say that in that case, I might never get to painting. Around midnight, you fall asleep on the couch watching reruns of American Idol. I paint.

Do you have any idea the kind of looks they give you when you come to work in ironed shirtsleeves with paint under your nails? I didn’t either until today. I said I had been painting with my sick sister. Everyone gives me sad, knowing looks when I talk about her. I feel bad using her as my alibi, but it’s just force of habit. It’s just the roles we play.

The doctors say she hasn’t got much longer. There won’t be anymore surgery or radiation. She has wisps of baby hair growing in on her scalp. They said I should take her home. There’s nothing left to do but love her. So the armchairs moved out of the gallery to occupy a corner of the dining room, and she moves in. The flowered coffee table serves as her nightstand, and you leave her a copy of A Horse And His Boy. She tries to read it, but says the words swim too much. The doctor said the tumour is putting too much pressure on her optic nerve. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t look up when I enter the room.

She’s started drawing on you again. Her flowers have turned lopsided and lumpy, like a sack of potatoes on a post. You say they look like butterflies. She asks you if you love her. You say yes.

I’ve known you for two months.

She doesn’t like eggplant anymore. Now I feed her green peas. She always know when I’ve put something in them. She says the protein powder makes her sicker. I give you a bit and you can’t taste anything. Neither can I.

She’s started to look like empty clothes. You show me pictures of you, only younger. The two of you could be twins. You look almost as tired as she does. A gameboy, a remote, or a copy of Harry Potter co-star in almost every picture. It’s hard to tell your age in these. I ask and you just say you were too young. I want to erase this. All of it. Off of you. Off of her. It’s like that layer of chalk dust you can never quite get off the black board. But instead of chalk, it’s sunburns and asbestos and chemo and being too young. I tell you how much I want to erase it. You say tough luck.

She calls me what she called me when we were kids. She calls me Doober, when she calls me. She calls you Nurse now. The location and company doesn’t seem to be apparent to her anymore. She asks if this is the hospital, or heaven. You tell her it’s somewhere in the in between. I don’t say anything at all until Oprah comes on. I try to talk to her about the topics, and keep her engaged. She ignores the TV and draws butterfly flowers on the palms of my hands.

Every time I leave the room she says goodbye. I tell her I’ll come right back, and she says she doesn’t know if she will. She cries when you go home. You always offer to stay, but I say no. Just go. Sleep in your own bed. Shower in your own shower. You don’t owe us anything. It’s Okay. You kiss me on my forehead and say you owe us everything.

My sister never finished Narnia.

I stand in the doorway of the gallery for almost an hour before you come in. You have a bag of frozen peas with you. You put it down and hold me instead. You don’t say anything. You just stand in the hallway and hold me.

You take out the number tucked in my back pocket and make the call. You call because I can’t. I can’t speak to them. I can’t bear to watch them zip her up and wheel her out. I can’t look away. They ask if I need to say a last goodbye. I dribble.

It turns out there’s no such thing as last goodbyes. Because you never think it’s the last when you say it, and if you do know it’s the last, you don’t say anything at all.

We put a third chair where her bed was. You paint a single seed dandelion up the back. The two other chairs move back in, after a while. They’re green like Central Park with a horizon painted on the backs. The city on one, the reservoir on the other. You stand in the middle, splitting them in two.

Lady watched Charlie as he took each scruffy
pup and put it in the sack. She sniffed his hand
when he grabbed one, and then she’d sniff
her porch spot where the rest was.
Then I was sniffin’ too, because I knew
she didn’t have no idea what was happening.
When they was all gone into the sack she nosed it
and just kept whinin’ and waggin’ her tail.

Charlie laughed at her. He said
What’s the matter Lady? You like fleas?
Then he held the sack close to her nose
so she could smell it better. I could see
them puppies wigglin’ through the sack,
and they was cryin’ for Lady. Poor stupid Lady
just kept on waggin’ her tail.

Charlie told me to come on and we was going to
throw them puppies off the bridge.
But I said no way, I ain’t no damn killer.
He said they was just a bunch of fleas
and then he laughed again. Lady was still standin’
right by him sort of shiftin’ her feet and smellin’ that bag.

Charlie got mad then and threw his beer bottle at me,
but I ducked and ran away. When I came back later
I guess he did it, ‘cause the puppies was gone
and he was sittin’ inside drinkin’ more beer
and watchin’ TV. He laughed at me again
and called me dumb flea-lover.
Lady sniffed all over the porch and around
the house the rest of the day. She cried all night
and I didn’t get no sleep at all.

The next day she stopped whinin’. For a week,
every time Charlie saw Lady he said
where’s your fleas girl?
Poor stupid Lady just wagged her damn tail.

]]> http://thepontificators.com/blog/2009/03/19/264/feed/ 6 http://thepontificators.com/blog/2009/03/17/the-birth-of-the-dragon/ http://thepontificators.com/blog/2009/03/17/the-birth-of-the-dragon/#comments Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:38:12 +0000 Charlie http://thepontificators.com/blog/?p=216 I was born a Day Gecko. Diminutive green scales gleamed, wet-like in the morning.

A flavorsome, buttery sunlight
melted through the awning of my jungle estate,
dribbling down banana leaves to nutrify me.
I grew robust and adventurous;
meandering, munching on invertebrates,
rolling my tongue down conical blossoms
to liberate sweet nectar.

Gecko life was good.

After some elapsing of days,
I observed my reflection in a bath
where dew had splashed together
in the cup of a stone.

Growths!
Gnarly bumps were bursting up,
spilling out of my shoulders!
I could feel my skeleton unrolling,
coiling like snakes inside a stretched bag.
My bones spread skin
over two fresh sprouts;
gangly limbs that oozed haggard fingers.
They draped themselves with leathery membranes,
then pruned,
folding flaps and sags until it was taut webbing--
until in my reflection
I saw a pair of wings!

At dusk, when shock began to peel itself away,
I found I had pitched myself up to the highest branch
of the tallest tree in Madagascar.
I flagged like so much runny yolk,
watching recumbant clouds coast buoyantly past,
summoning me.

Copyright (C) 2009 ThePontificators.com

With his left hand still wrapped in a small towel to protect it from the nasty edges, the boy reached up again and knocked out the remaining glass from the window. A line of blood moved from his wrist to curve around to the underside of his arm, mingling with dirt and sweat.

The window clear, the boy freed his hand from the towel and pulled himself up to the opening. He wriggled through the small window out onto the hard ground and dry grass. He lay still, listening, afraid to breathe, afraid to move. Silence. He turned his head to look back into the room, at the cot, the pile of blankets in the corner, the rope. Someday he would come back and burn the room. Burn the whole house down. A sudden spasm of adrenaline brought the boy to his feet. He began to run.

He was sprinting. His legs had taken over, his bare feet thudded on the ground, a noise that echoed in his head. His breathing, at first small gasps mixed with whimpers, soon evened out to match the rhythm of his legs, and he ran faster.

There were no obstacles; all was flat and dry and heat. The grasses were harsh and whipped his shins and ankles, scratched his feet. No fences, no trees. In front of him just the sun, to either side nothing but distance.

He turned to look behind him as he ran. There the house, dirty white with empty windows that glared in the afternoon light. Except the basement window, where there was no more glass. The screen door hung crooked on its hinges.

His eyes watered and he blinked against the brightness of the sun. Tears escaped as he blinked, and were pushed away from his eyes by the force of air against him, to mix with sweat and slide down the edge of his face. His legs were numb, the muscles in his side started to cramp as his breathing grew more labored. The air felt heavy.

Below the sun a dark line stretched across the horizon, like a deep cut against pale skin. The boy’s eyes fixed on it, and he found a way to make his legs move a little faster. He could hide behind trees maybe. He could blend in with the fallen branches and groups of ferns and bushy undergrowth. He could find a hole to crawl into, and be gone forever. He took a quick glance behind him again, could not avoid the impulse. The house was smaller, but still close. The man stood on the porch.

The boy’s breath caught in his throat, his legs lost their rhythm for the briefest of moments, and he felt pain in his feet. His mind went blank as he regained his balance and set his legs to do quick work. All he knew was running. His breath sought to even itself out, and came in regular, short gasps. Close your eyes and run. Cement walls, rope scratching at ankles and wrists. The cot. His eyes opened, stayed on the line of trees. He blinked away more watery tears. Don’t close them. Can’t close them yet. Just run.

The sun disappeared behind the trees. The dry grassy field ended abruptly at the foot of the first trees. Ahead were thick leafy branches and sticky bushes and strange smells. To the right and left the trees stretched out like a giant wall, and among them the boy ran, barely slacking his pace as his feet left hard dirt and grass and encountered fallen leaves, damp and cool, sticks and tree roots that had pushed up through the soil.

He ran, arms held up to shield his face from little reaching branches that whipped against his skin as he ran through them. His legs jumped over lowly plants and old tree branches. Something plucked at the sleeve of his dirty white tee shirt but the force of his running freed himself almost instantly, leaving a scratch beneath the cotton.

He reached out his left arm and wrapped it around a young tree as he ran by, to halt himself, give him something to lean on while he fought to fill his lungs. His legs were shaking, his stomach was sick, his ears were filled with the pounding of blood in his head. The boy looked behind him, around the tree he was leaning on. No forest edge, no yellow field. Just trees. The air was thin and cooled his lungs. His feet stung where blood escaped through cracks in his skin to sink into the forest floor.

He pushed himself from the tree and took a step forward. His legs were weak, so tired. They could not support him and he fell to his knees, his head weighed down so that his chin nearly rested on his chest. His eyes stared at the ground. Twigs, leaves, pieces of wood, plant, dark soil. He wanted to lie down, to rest his face against the cool of the dirt and debris.

Far behind him the sound of breaking sticks and crushing leaves. The boy’s head jerked up. He tried to stand, his legs gave way beneath him. There, just a little ahead and to the left, a fallen log. An old, massive thing, too tired to stand anymore, it had toppled over to rest on the damp, dark earth. Its roots stretched up tall into the air, ferns grew where once it had stood, and all around where it lay. The boy crawled towards the tree, eyes fixed on it, hands and knees supporting him, hurrying him.

There was a hollow in the dirt, underneath the sleeping tree. The boy lay on his stomach and pushed himself through the ferns. They tickled his skin. He turned his face to the side, out of the dirt. The rough bark of the tree scraped his cheek as he pulled himself under the tree, to rest in the little ditch there. He lay flat on his stomach, legs stretched out, arms at his side, the tree large and heavy above him, the line of ferns in front of him like little soldiers standing guard. They were still now, no longer moving from his disturbance. The boy’s eyes were wide, staring out through the green lace to the tree where he had stopped to rest. He breathed through his mouth, trying to slow it down, trying to quiet his heart, which beat so loudly.

Past the tree where the little boy had first stopped stood the man. He was still, though his eyes moved to and fro, looking. Always looking. They moved like wasps, quick jerks of flight. The boy watched him take a step, then another. The man saw the fallen tree, saw the stand of ferns, saw the smoothed out ground where something small had slid over it to lie beneath the log; tired, shaking, afraid. The man took a step forward.

The boy jerked where he lay as the tree above him shook. Something heavy landed there, and paced above him on the tree, the ponderous thuds reverberating through the wood, causing dirt to fall from the underside of the tree onto the boy. The man stood still, his eyes fixed on the moving thing, his hands clenched in fists. He cocked his head to the side, and took a step forward.

The tree shook and creaked as the pacing thing lept from it to the ground between the boy and the man. Its tail flicked from side to side, its front paws kneaded the ground slightly where it stood, ruffling the fallen leaves and twigs that lay there. The boy gazed at the creature, eyes fixated on the deep orange of the fur interrupted by black daggers striped along its sides. The man stood, one leg still in front where he had stepped forward. He pulled it back slowly, head still tilted to the side, balled up fists now opening, now closing again. His mouth moved, curled up at the sides like burning paper, grimace and grin. The man turned, walked back through the forest, disappearing behind the trees.

The boy stared at the tiger. It moved its head, looked behind him past the ferns, at the boy. It turned its body and began to walk lightly back to the fallen tree, its movements smooth, like liquid. The boy would run his fingertips over the orange and black, would sink his hand in the fur till it reached the skin. The tiger stood at the tree among the ferns, head down to peer into the hollow. Two faces inches apart.

The boy fell asleep.

(c) 2009 thepontificators.com

]]> http://thepontificators.com/blog/2009/03/14/the-boy-and-the-tiger/feed/ 8 http://thepontificators.com/blog/2009/03/10/a-beautiful-woman/ http://thepontificators.com/blog/2009/03/10/a-beautiful-woman/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:38:23 +0000 Christopher http://thepontificators.com/blog/?p=23 “You know,” George says, “I heard somewhere that living in Seattle is like living with a beautiful woman who’s sick all the time.”

I don’t look at him. I’m too busy trying to keep my hair out of my eyes and the seagulls out of my fish and chips. “Huh,” I say, and wave away another seagull. “Sure does rain a lot.”

“I have to agree with you there,” George says. “You going to finish your root beer?”

George is this funny older guy who lives in my building. When my mom comes to visit she talks to me in hushed tones about how she thinks he isn’t all there, you know, in the head, but because she is my mother and because I am her son I just roll my eyes and wave a hand and brush her off.

She’s right, though. Good old George isn’t really all there, but that’s okay because that means he’s about half again as gracious as anyone else I’ve met in the building. Before I met him I thought chivalry was dead, but he bows to women, opens doors, puts his coat over puddles, gives up his seat on the bus to old people and women and… well, anyone really. He always wears this atrocious green sweater with leather elbow patches and brown corduroy pants with loafers. His hair is thinning and his sight is failing and he’s probably just a year or two out of his midlife crisis — assuming George has ever had anything even vaguely resembling a crisis.

We’re standing on a pier at the Seattle waterfront, the one with the Ivar’s, and I’ve got fish and chips and a bottle of root beer. George didn’t get anything because of his diet, but he and I have a deal where I order whatever I want and then he can have some, because stolen calories don’t count. So if he wants some root beer, then why not? He can go ahead.

“Nah, go ahead,” I say, and he goes ahead.

“My wife’s like that,” George says, staring out over the water and sipping at the bottle.

I look up. “Your wife?”

“Like Seattle,” George says. “A beautiful woman who’s sick all the time.”

I look back down at the water, at the barnacle-encrusted pilings, and think about how I’ve never seen his wife. Sick or not, I’ve never seen her, and I wonder if this is just one of his games.

“I met her,” he says, squinting up at the sky and holding up the bottle like an artist’s pencil, “thirty years ago. Love at first sight. You never forget your first true love.”

“I don’t imagine you do,” I say, leaning out over the rail, my arms folded.

“You don’t,” he says again, and this time he chugs the rootbeer until it’s gone. “Let’s go home before it starts to rain again.”

It’s sunny out but I know George too well to distrust his eye for weather, so we gather up our garbage and walk away from the seagulls and the water and the pier, and towards the apartment building where I’ve never seen his wife.

.

“What do you mean, his wife?”

“I mean his wife, mom,” I say, and roll my eyes, and sigh. “I just wanted to know if you ever met her.”

“Who on earth would ever want to live with that man, day in and day out? He’s a danger, Daniel. A danger.” I can almost hear her pink flowered housedress through the phone, the cat curling around her ankles, the clock on the wall.

“He’s not a danger, mom,” I say, smiling despite myself as I look at my own clock and realize that it’s four pm and she probably still hasn’t changed out of her slippers. “He’s just a funny old guy in my building. And you haven’t met his wife?”

“Can’t imagine he could ever tempt a woman down the aisle,” she mutters, and I hear the sound of her sipping coffee in that judgmental way she has.

I look at the window. As predicted, rain is pelting my window with a fervor not seen since… well, since the last time it rained. I marvel again at George’s supernatural thumb on this city’s pulse.”I was just curious. I’ve never seen her.”

“He’s not all there, you know. In the head.”

“I know, mom. I know.”

George isn’t really mental — he’s just got his weird quirks. He fancies himself a writer but I’ve never seen him with a book. He fancies himself a wit, in league with men like Oscar Wilde and Winston Churchill, but he’s never cracked a joke that made me laugh. He’s a funny old man in a funny little apartment.

I’ve never seen his wife.

.

“She was beautiful,” he says, gesturing with his coffee cup. We’re cloistered in the dark little living room, wrapped in two of his elephantine armchairs, drinking coffee and riding out the storm. It’s not often we sit together in these armchairs, but today is just a coffee and company day, so we talk about anything that isn’t the weather. “She was beautiful, all those years ago when I laid eyes on her first. All… all shiny like.”

I give him what my father would call a Hairy Eyeball and blow gently on my boiling coffee. “Shiny?”

He sits back, half satisfaction and half defeat. “Shiny,” George says, and shrugs. “Still just as beautiful now. Different,” he adds. “A lot different. Louder, more temperamental. Sometimes she probably doesn’t love me like I love her. But beautiful.”

“I’m sure she still loves you,” I say, lying through my teeth and hoping that he won’t suddenly jump up and yell ‘gotcha!’ as I fall for his little trick. I can’t tell yet if he’s tricking me, not yet, and I’m not sure if I want to.

“Wouldn’t still be here if she didn’t,” George says, and smiles quietly, watching his coffee seiche back and forth in the mug. “She doesn’t show it like they show it in the movies, but she does. You can tell, just looking at her.”

We sit in silence for an hour, maybe more, and I sit there thinking that I’m missing something. I’m missing something, but I don’t know what.

In the years following that coffee-filled stormy weekend, George mentions his mystery wife maybe all of four times, each mention more vague than the last, each time with more sadness and love. I’ve stopped thinking this is just a game. George is married, married to a beautiful woman who’s sick all the time. Sick with what? She might be in the hospital. Cancer, maybe. Sometimes at night I’ll think about George and his wife in a hospital room, her thin hands barely contrasting against the crisp white sheets, until I can’t think about it anymore and watch a movie instead.

Three years later George is hit by a bus on 5th. His hair was thin and his sight was failing — maybe failing too much to look before crossing, who knows.

I ask my parents to drive in for the funeral and when they get here my mom asks after George’s wife.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I never did end up meeting her.”

I don’t say any more about it, even though I spoke quietly with the priest before my parents arrived, and know exactly who George’s wife is.

Living in Seattle, George said, is like being married to a beautiful woman who’s sick all the time.

George was never married, but he knew everything about loving a beautiful woman who could never love him back.