The Cascading: Knights of the Fire Ring

by CW Ullman

“Teresa from Pismo Beach, this will be our Triple A lodgings for the night.”

  Charlie dug around in the hay, found his pack with the sleeping bag attached and worked the knots loose. He pushed the clothes bags to the side and started stacking hay to make a soft bed. He centered the sleeping bag on top of the hay, rolled it out and unzipped it. He went to the top of the bag and piled extra hay for a pillow. When he was finished, he straightened the bag and then stood up.

  He said, “Miss Teresa, your bed –“

  When he turned, she was standing completely naked except for a hat. He stepped backwards, stunned. She was radiant in the moon light that shone through the window. Her left leg was crossed over her right.

  She said, “I don’t sleep with clothes on.”

  He did not know what to do. Should he take his clothes off completely? Should he leave his pants on, should he strip down to his underwear? He knew he had to get his sneakers off, but he was afraid they would smell. So, instead of doing anything he was paralyzed, doing nothing.

  Teresa asked, “Can I get in, I’m cold?”

  Charlie rushed to pull the sleeping bag open for her, and then tucked it around her.

  She said, “You better get those jeans off because they’re going to be a little rough in here.”

  He took off his shoes, his shirt and jeans, but left on his white BVD underwear. He pulled the top flap back catching a full view of her moon-lit breast. He got in the bag and tucked it around them. She put her leg over Charlie and snuggled up next to him.

  “You’re cold, Mr. Charlie. I’m going to warm you up.”

  She started rubbing his arms, then picked up the arm nearest her and laid it under her neck. She sidled up to Charlie, and brought her leg high on his thighs. Her brisk rubbing of his chest turned to slow stroking. She touched his neck and he felt her lips follow. She kissed him gently on the neck, slowly moving to his jaw, then up to his cheek. She reached up turned his face to her and brushed her lips against his mouth. She pushed herself up higher on him, her breast falling on his chest while she kissed his other cheek.

  “Look at me, Charlie,” she said. As he was watching her eyes, she hovered above his mouth and slowly brought her lips to his. She languidly pressed her mouth to his until the entire surface of their lips were touching. Her lips forced his mouth open to slip her tongue against his. She pushed his tongue and he pushed back. Her leg was now riding up past his thigh, sending a shiver through him. She was pushing herself higher on his chest and kissing him hard. His eyes were closed and he was lost in feeling.

  “Look at me, Charlie,” Teresa whispered.

  Charlie’s eyes opened, unfocussed. The rush of feeling from two bodies becoming one was intoxicating. Submitting to her touch, her mouth, her voice, and her caress propelled Charlie across a threshold of bliss he had never known.

  The heat was so intense, Teresa pushed back the flap of the sleeping bag.

  “Pull off your underwear, Charlie, I want to touch you.”

  Charlie pushed his underwear to his knees and then worked them off with his feet. She told him again to watch while her hand touched near to his mouth. He watched the hand move as she feathered her fingers down his chest to his stomach. She lazily drew her finger on his abdomen and into his hair. Draping her fingers around his hardness caused Charlie to gasp slightly. She slid her hand down the shaft to caress him and to lift his orbs gently back and forth making him even harder. Her mantra was slow and rhythmic.

  “Charlie, look at me,” she whispered.

  He looked into her eyes and found her face aglow with light. Later he would think this was how suns were born, in a self-effulgent radiance, lighting and warming things by seeding their hearts with unimaginable feeling, making them unable to contain themselves.

  She rolled herself across his body until she straddled him. She sat on him with her head back, and hair falling to her waist, which made him believe goddesses still lived. As though her desire alone was a force of magnetism, without using her hands, she commandeered his shaft deep within her, creating a sensation that arched both their heads backwards, and made them gasp in unison.

  She pumped him in a bouncing motion. It started slow and small and grew longer and faster. She was squeezing him inside her wet grip.

  She said, “Tell me you love me.”

  She said it slowly over and over while she pumped him harder and faster, until he stopped her by grasping her hips and holding her down on his pelvis with his totem deep inside of her. He had a command in his voice that silenced and thrilled her. She was surprised hearing her refrain from him. He held her, teasing the moment, before he whispered it to her.

  “Teresa…look at me.”

  He held her hips down and rolled his pelvis up driving deeper into her. With his left hand holding her hip, he brought his right hand to the small of her back and nudged her forward and down so their faces would be near each other.

  “Teresa, look at me,” he said.

  She grabbed his face, kissing him with such a wild passion that it made her cry. Her tears were falling on his face and her vulnerability triggered an emotional wave in him.

  “I love you, Teresa,” he gasped.

  He was repeating his love for her with every breath. She could not hold him tightly enough or get enough of him. She ran both of her arms around his neck and laid her face next to his. She was weeping and the strength of his arms wrapped securely around her made her even more emotional. He was driving and pumping her from the bottom in a slow motion that became faster and faster. She held her pelvis higher, so he could thrust deeper and faster into her. Hearing the slapping against her vulva with his pelvis made them both more excited. With every thrust, he sent a vibratory ripple through her delta. Then the sound came. His growling, full-throated rumbling seemed to almost come from her, as she was issuing a guttural sound that felt like he engendered the call. He was swollen, pressing against her gripping walls. Her passage was squeezing so tightly that when his seed exploded forth, it initiated peristaltic waves of a rolling orgasm in her.

  Her body was vibrating and sensitized so highly she could feel the air in the stall on her skin. Her waves of contractions were rolling down on his shaft while it, too, was pulsating. They climaxed together, their bodies synchronized into compatible seizures. She had to hold onto him and he could not let go of her.

  She dropped on him in tears and he cradled her head, kissing her hair. He felt her shiver and reached with his free hand to pull the sleeping bag over her body to cover her back. She laid her head on his chest and he stroked her hair.

  They were together. No matter how far apart they would travel, where they would go, or what they would do, they would always be together. As the moon rose in the sky and their labored breathing became rhythmic and soft, the scents of hay and each other were the intoxicating aromas that took them into sleep. They were together.

  <>

  When Charlie awoke the next morning, where Teresa had lain was a note. It read: “Last night was wonderful. You looked so sweet sleeping I didn’t want to wake you. I got your address from your wallet to write you and to send you the five bucks I borrowed to get a cab. I hope you’re cool with that. Anyway, Charlie from Tulsa, last night was dreamy. Hope to see you soon. Peace and love, Teresa.”

  He got up, pulled on his pants, and ran out of the stables. It was Monday morning and the fairground was being put back together by the work crew operating tractors and back hoes. He walked up to one of them and asked the driver if he had seen a blond girl. He said he saw someone like that getting into a cab on the far side of the fairgrounds about a half an hour ago.

  Charlie was dumbstruck. He had no way of contacting her. All he had was her first name. He had no phone number, no address – nothing. She did mention Pismo Beach, but he had no idea where that was. His disappointment with her early departure was mixed with intoxicating images of the night. He pulled his belongings together, got back on Highway One, and started hitchhiking north.

&nb
sp; After Monterey, he crossed America through the northern states, ending in New York. By then he had tired of thumbing rides and bought a bus ticket for Tulsa. He could not get Teresa out of his mind for the entire three months he was on the road. This was the girl with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life.

  <>

  He received a letter from Teresa his third month in the service. She wrote that she had just found his address. The letter was brief, asking to know “whatever happened to Charlie-from-Tulsa.” She had been traveling in Europe and was in and out of college. She had a job in a casino doing cocktails. The address on the envelope was from Bullhead City, Arizona. Charlie finally found out her full name: Teresa Saunders. He wrote her back, but two months later the letter was returned, “Undeliverable.”

  The next letter he received from Teresa arrived five months later, postmarked Flagstaff, Arizona. She wrote that she had gotten married to an Arizona State graduate who had gotten drafted into the Army. She hoped Charlie was doing well.

  The news that she was married was heartbreaking. He did not know what to write in return. Should he congratulate her and act like it was not a big deal to him? Or should he tell her to break up with her husband. He wanted to tell her how much she had been in his thoughts and how much he wanted to marry her. He wanted to express that the night they were together in Monterey exceeded every other night of his life, but she was married. He read the line over and over to hoping it was wrong.

  Still in training in Pensacola, Florida, he confided in his fellow trainees and they advised him he needed to go out with them and get drunk. They were very intoxicated by nine o’clock. By ten o’clock they had been thrown out of three bars and by ten-thirty, they ran into three U.S. Army soldiers. Charlie called them, “Jodie Fucks.” The three Army G.I.s laughed because technically they could not be Jodie Fucks since they were in the service. However, one of the Army soldiers wondered out loud if the five sailors were in the bar looking for their gynecologist.

  This was the row for which Charlie was looking. Although the bouncers from the bar did more damage than the eight servicemen, Charlie deemed it a success because he made good on his pronouncement, “I don’t care if I get my ass kicked, but you three motherfuckers are all getting face shots.”

  Charlie got in exactly three shots. Two accidently hit his friends in the back of their heads and the third caromed off somebody’s shoulder back into Charlie’s face, and then he got his ass kicked. He was actually lucky to have hit anybody as drunk as he was. After the bouncers threw them out of the club, they took a cab back to the base.

  When morning came, Charlie woke up – in the latrine under one of the toilets. Charlie lifted his head and hit the bottom of the toilet tank.

  One of his friends walked in and Charlie was glad because until he spoke, he did not know where he was. Later in the day when he sobered up, he reread Teresa’s letter. While he was devastated, he also saw the irony of getting a Dear John letter from a girl who had not yet become his girlfriend. He decided not to write her back and hoped she would not write him anymore.

  <>

  After spending the night in Wendover, Utah, Charlie drove until he arrived in Denver. He thought people in Denver seemed laid-back like people on the West Coast. Denver was supposed to be a brief visit on his way to see relatives in Oklahoma, but that changed after he stopped in a Denny’s to eat lunch. In the adjacent booth sat a group that included a black girl with an inviting smile and dimples in which one could hide dimes. Despite her wide smile, she had a wary look in her eyes. On the way back from the ladies’ room, she stopped by his table and asked him, ”Are you happy?”

  Her smile motivated him to consider the question when normally he would have told her to fuck off.

  “Am I happy,” Charlie repeated. “Oh, I guess I’m as happy as the next guy. Are you happy?”

  She sat down at his table and said, “Blissfully. I used to be confused and frustrated, but then I started to meditate and it quieted my mind. It dimmed the voice, you know? That running conversation we all have?”

  Bingo.

  Charlie thought a lot about the conversation, and here in a Denny’s on Colfax Avenue in Denver, Colorado, a complete stranger asked him about his it. He was curious about this ongoing mental discussion and wondered why it existed and what it was. When he was younger, he wondered if this was the thing his mother spoke of when she referred to as following one’s conscience. If it was, it seemed inconsistent as a beacon for good behavior. The conversation frequently gave conflicting viewpoints, suggestions, and prejudices. It too often created paralysis rather than action. What he did not like was its constancy.

  The dimpled girl continued, “You know, the mind chatter that’s incessant and seems like your worst critic and it never shuts up?”

  “Kinda,” Charlie said. It was not a conversation at this point in Charlie’s life as much as an echo. He heard it often when pondering the choices he made and opportunities he passed up. It would not leave him alone about the girl on the Enterprise, Teresa, his parents, his life, everything. He tried drinking to drown it out, but the alcohol was not providing peace just more trouble.

  “Do you drink a lot?” she asked.

  “What are you, a psychic?” he asked.

  She laughed and said her psychic abilities were enhanced when she could spot a bottle in a pocket. Charlie looked down and saw the bottle sticking out of his pants. She wondered if he was not busy would he like to come with them and listen to some music.

  “Sure. I got nowhere I have to be,” Charlie answered.

  “Good. Would you mind giving me and my friends a ride; we hitchhiked here.”

  They went to a neighborhood near downtown Denver, to a large Victorian house on Race Street where a group of about forty people sat on a living room floor staring at an empty chair. Microphones stood off to the side. Soon after they arrived, a couple in their twenties walked in carrying guitars. They tested the mics and greeted the crowd with their hands pressed together. After strumming the instruments a few times, the girl stepped to the mic.

  “It’s nice to see everyone here. I hope you are having a blissful day.” Wearing a wreath of flowers around her white-blond hair, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and bowed her head. The seated group bowed their heads and closed their eyes. Charlie did not know what to make of a room full of people enjoying what seemed like minutes of silent reverie. The girl began to sing with a lilting, lyrical quality that calmed Charlie’s anxiety. She sang of lost love and searching and the melody drew him out of his thoughts. When she opened her eyes, she was looking directly at Charlie. He could not turn his gaze away. Even though he was blushing with embarrassment, he was compelled to stay with this visual embrace.

  The song lasted a few minutes more, then culminated in a chorus as the people in the room joined in singing. It became more fervent as they clapped in time to the music. The black girl turned to Charlie, beaming a smile at him, and gently bounced into his shoulder, making him smile. After fifteen minutes, the group applauded the performers who put down their guitars and joined the group. A few moments later a small older man in saffron robes came out and sat in the empty chair. He was from India and had a red mark on his forehead above his nose. When he sat down, he closed his eyes keying the group to close theirs.

  “Devotees, it is a day of bliss, is it not? What do you think? Hmm?” He greeted the group.

  His accent was thick and his sound came from the back of his throat. When he said words like “think”, they sounded like “tink.”. When ending sentences, the inflection in his voice always went up. It sounded to Charlie as though he was singing because of the changes of modulation in his speech pattern. He reminded Charlie of a character in a movie that had just been released that summer, Yoda, from Star Wars.

  He stated, “When people ask me about peace, I ask them, ‘Do you mean world peace? I tell them world peace is impossible until you have peace in your heart. You cannot ask someone to be peaceful if
you are not. You cannot have personal peace if your heart is wrapped in barbed wire. What do you think? What is your heart wrapped in, I ask? Hmm?”

  Then he smiled. As a dog laps water, Charlie was drinking in what this man said. Charlie’s heart was wrapped in yards of barbed wire which he had not realized until this little man said it. Like the girl singing, this small Indian man held Charlie’s gaze. The words drew him from his emotional prison and made him as warm as if drapes had been pulled back from a window letting in sunlight. How this little man could fathom Charlie’s state was a wonder to him. He posed questions that described every dilemma in which Charlie had found himself.

  “If you are in pain and want relief what do you do? Hmm? Don’t you take aspiring? Yes, you do. When your mind won’t stop talking to you what do you do? Do you tell it to be quiet? Does that work? When a child is crying, does the child stop crying when you yell at it? No, you give it milk to drink and when the child becomes a man he is given alcohol to drink. When your mind is crying and you yell at it, does it stop crying? No, I don’t tink so. What should you do?” His smile broadened when he answered his own question, “You need to take aspiring.”

  Saying aspiring made the room break out in laughter. The little man’s smile was almost impish and the laughter made the little man laugh deep from his belly. To Charlie, this laughing, wise man represented an epiphany; he had answers Charlie had been seeking a long time.

  The little man continued, “Well, we cannot put an aspiring in our brain. We cannot stop our crying from the outside, we must do it ourselves and it must come from here.” He pointed to his heart. “Not here,” he pointed to his mouth.

  “When we don’t want to see something, we close our eyes. Everyone, close your eyes,” he ordered. “What do you see? Hmm? Anybody?”

  One of the men in the room spoke up, “I see nothing.”

  “Yes. Now when we don’t want to hear something, we close our ears?” He started tapping his foot. He continued, “Do you hear my foot tapping? Why? Is it because you can’t close your ears? Hmm? I think so. You can only focus your hearing on another sound, you can never turn it off. If you want to hear the divine sound that replaces the sound of craziness, you must learn to meditate. Open your eyes.”