Marshsong

by Nato Thompson

  Fennel wandered the streets with his head spinning. He proceeded to the Miser’s Quarters first hoping to find a rich man to rob but the streets were already dying down: the urchins putting their pennies back in their pockets. the rich men asleep with visions of usury setting their heart to a beat; the windows of the shopkeepers already going dim; and the sounds that did sound out in the night were those of too many drunks, guffawing all too loud. The Miser’s Quarter was dead as a doornail—nothing but the glinting of jewelry in the windows and the faint smell of perfumes clogging nasal passages, pheromones, deer piss and lilacs.

  He smelled a pack of wet dogs down an alleyway and scooted his way toward them—their fur a haven of fleas, sweat, trashcan effluvia and canine saliva. He loved that dogs traveled in packs. Mobs of camaraderie. It made him smile. The ragtag lot—the Basset Hound and the Pikingese, the Doberman and the Boston Terrier. As a group they were the definition of motley and the sight of them made him laugh out loud. They were clustered around some garbage cans, snarling, yapping, grabbing a late night snack of pizza crust and fish heads and snarling with their teeth to get even a smidgen of a bite.

  Fennel got on all fours and scampered toward them. He hated what the streets would do to his little hands, but he couldn’t resist becoming one with the dogs. He sniffed some butts and raised a leg or two. He banged his head against the leader of the pack; a mean eyed English Bulldog and let his presence be known. He gained acceptance fast—his smell, more than anything else, suddenly sending off a secret call meant for a world that humans had long past noticed. He joined in the pack making the motley gaggle all the more motley.

  They took him in without even a blink. A Daschund gave him a sniff or two and Fennel seemed to check out. Fennel got into the mix and tried his best to get a bite of pizza crust with his teeth, but he could only fit in so much. The dogs were far more skilled at that than he. They then bounded out and he traveled with them. Let the dogs lead where they may. Fennel howled at the night and the Boston Terrier joined him. Awoooo!

  They scooted out of the Miser’s Quarters and followed a side road where the cobblestones gradually became dirt, the streetlights becoming fewer and fewer until only the light of the roadside campfires and porch lanterns illuminated the way. They were in the District of Jed, a part of town familiar to Fennel only in that he had not so long ago engaged in one of his more fond escapades. He had actually titled it, The Episode of the Sedulous Doctor.

  It was only a few weeks back when he and sis had embarked on this tragic venture. The doctor, a resident of this broke part of town, had broken the cardinal rule of doctoring—a fate typical of many a doctor in Barrenwood. He continued to get high on his own supply. Though he was one of the more prominent physicians in town, rumors had begun to circulate regarding his medical practice. He had begun to suffer from paranoid hysterics. Word had reached the twins by way of the Persembe sisters, and the twins couldn’t resist the temptation to interfere. Fennel found particular pleasure in anyone else’s paranoia. He had taken it upon himself to exacerbate the situation for the mere pleasure of being a terrible person.

  Heading out toward the District of Jed so late in the night, one could call it morn, he had begun to appear in the doctor’s room clad in white sheets. White, of all things! He would saunter about in ghostly fashion trying out his ghost voice, whispering faint suggestions into the room. The words would hover somnolently into the doctor's ears.

  “You have betrayed us, Doctor Seppy. You have sent us deep, deep into the grave. We have not forgotten. The dirt has not forgotten! Go now and dig us up. Release us from our premature burial!”

  Much to the pleasure of the twins, the doctor reacted with little surprise. At the sound of Fennel’s screechy ghost voice, the doctor merely looked up into the tin roof above his bed as though finally receiving confirmation of things long suspected. The twins watched in bewilderment as he calmly began to carry out Fennel’s whispered demands. Doctor Seppy wasn’t quite sure who specifically this ghost had been referring to so he simply began to dig up the patients he held the most guilt about. This turned out to be a long list. Strangely enough, they were all old women.

  The doctor’s strict adherence to Fennel’s orders was most pleasing and so, at Isabella’s request, Fennel began to take another direction.

  “I take it as a great affront the manner in which you conduct our liberation! You have not only failed to free us, but you have released the spirits of ghosts who are consumed with thoughts of your demise! Go put them back, quickly! We are the bodies to the north of those.”

  This began to panic the doctor. What at first began as a surprisingly carefree routine became a frantic damnation. He could not for the life of him understand what “to the north” could mean. With no small effort, he placed the old women’s bodies back in their graves. His tired muscles ached after the tenth body had been dragged back to its bucolic residence. Tired as he may be, the doctor persevered with tired, tired eyes and strained limp arms. Fennel found the doctor’s sedulousness so inspiring he even one evening crawled out from behind a tombstone and assisted in the digging for at this point nothing surprised the flawed doctor.

  Finally, these demons had been silenced and now he was able to begin digging everybody up on the north side of the cemetery. (He wanted to be sure he carried out the order!) He had calculated that within six months, he would be able to excavate and release 427 bodies. He was beginning to have small blackouts in the cemetery from exhaustion. Fennel would visit him at night in the cemetery and issue soothing words of encouragement. It was not long before he awoke one day in a grave for the body of Darian Pith with the groundskeeper staring down at him. Within a few days, the magistrate raided his home under suspicion of “improper theft of the dead”. To the dismay of every gentleman on the search, the home was chock-full of corpses, an inordinate supply of morphine, and a multitude of letters he had written to “the ghost boy.”(Letters of which the twins retained in their tragi-comic scrapbook,) The good doctor was then committed to the Pea Green Correctional Facility and the twins were pleased as grape punch.

  Such was Fennel’s last visit to this area, and now here he was on all fours, romping around with canine brethren. The pack worked its ways along the dirt roads, knocking over trash and finding fish tails hocked out by the increasingly gruff denizens. The pack entered the center of the district with each corner home to a different ale house. As asleep as the city had been, this particular area was in full swing. People suddenly appeared, some lounging on benches, others holding their hands over barrels full of fire. There was the smell of infatuation and desperation in the air—old stories of the wars gone by and new tales of children who had lost their way. Boasts and regrets mixed in the hazy steam of suds and rain. A crazed child ran after the pack with a stick and Fennel decided to make himself scarce for fear someone might notice a small boy on all fours at one with this mangy pack. He dusted himself off and bid adieu to his temporary canine community. He looked at his hands. He would need to find a basin.

  He walked through the center of the square to see a preacher man standing on a stool. The bald bespectacled man flailed with his arms and sermonized to a largely uninterested crowd. Propped up behind him, scrawled upon pieces of cardboard, were reminders of the wrath of god that was to come. Repent. Fire awaits. You shall burn in hell if you don’t accept his love. The writing was desperate, adding all the more madness and urgency to the preacher's call. The sign’s writing was done in a scrawled quality as though the devil himself had etched the words with a long callous fingernail. Fennel stopped and stared. He couldn’t get enough.

  “There isn’t much time! It’s running out! You can feel it slipping through your fingers, people! You while away the time, hoping that it won’t come, but you can hear it in your hearts, in your fear. You know, as the lord wants you to that the end is nigh. You know that all this shall fade and you shall stand on the great bridge begging for forgiveness. But it will be too late. Because you ignor
ed what was so obvious all your life. That you are nothing in the face of the great lord! That your obedience to his will is not an option but a necessity. You there, drinking yourself to death. Yes, you! I see you and the lord does all the more. He knows why you drink. He knows why you suffer. He only asks that you travel that golden roadway toward his abundant love. Drop the glass and come a walking! Bask in his glory!”

  Not a person paid attention—not an eye was batted—only Fennel and his dirty hands who stood a mere three feet from the self-appointed man of the cloth. The preacher took no notice of Fennel but instead continued his loud abrasive oratory on and on as though the only audience he truly desired was the lord mighty above.

  “Excuse me, dear sir,” said Fennel in his trained proper cockney.

  The preacher barely heard him. He was lost in the magic of his own voice—a sermon on the mount for one. He continued preaching and Fennel thought to himself, this man is a piece of work.

  “Excuse me!” said Fennel, jumping up and down, finally getting the preacher’s attention. The preacher looked down from his position on top of the stool. His eyes seemed to strain to get back into the world, his face clearly frustrated by having to stop what he considered perhaps one of his greatest oratories to date.

  “I didn’t know if I would ever get your attention. You get much too carried away, you know. Anyway, being the good holy man that you are, can you offer me a cloth to wipe my hands? I’m afraid I have sullied them,” said Fennel.

  The preacher screwed up his face. He had but one read for most of those who came his way; they were lost sheep, he was the shepherd. The preacher reached into his jacket and handed Fennel a handkerchief. Fennel wiped his small hands off and bowed to the preacher.

  “Thank you, my good man.”

  The preacher took the handkerchief back and placed his hand on Fennel’s head. Fennel wanted to not let this happen. He hated when anyone laid a hand on him, let alone on his head. It would take a while to fix his hair now. But he couldn’t resist as he enjoyed the prospect of being blessed by this man of an extremely cranky god.

  “Come to the light, my child. Repent your sins and walk toward the lord and his glory.”

  Fennel felt the preacher’s grip getting stronger on his head. He was really feeling the magic of the moment. He went with it and began to tremble. He let his own spirit move through him and began to wiggle and waggle and began to speak in a gibberish that shocked the preacher. He stared up at the preacher with eyes gone wild.

  “Gleh, gleh, muah gone pocknall. Zull frick nillben, chiz fish willykins. Zurgen crill naighshock!” Fennel let the spirit of strange words come out of his mouth, enjoying the increasing freakish look on the preacher man’s face. Fennel did a flip in the air and raised his hands high in the air.

  “Preacher man! Hear me, preacher man! For I am the wrath of that god you so badly wanted to meet. I have come home with the chickens to roost, preacher man! Your words have become poison in a god’s ear, an incessant pounding, pounding, on the door of my slumber room. Have you no capacity for silence? You preach my words but you know not their meaning. You are a mouth without a brain, a mouth without a heart. Your capacity to speak outstrips your capacity to learn. You are a maw unfeedable. I am your lord, Preacher Man!”

  Fennel pointed his finger at the man and the man recoiled, stepping off his chair. He got on his knees and placed his hands together to pray. Fennel pointed his finger down on the man hoping to get him to lay prostrate on the ground, but the preacher man had resilience. He suddenly gained strength and stared back with fire in his eyes. He climbed back onto the stool and the two found themselves pointing at each other.

  “Devil be gone!” said the preacher man. “You haunt me this day and try to waver my mission. You tempt me, but I will not bite your apple!”

  “I have never offered you my apple to bite!” laughed Fennel. “You, my preacher man, are the devil’s playground. A loathsome child lost in the wilderness of a dream of grandiosity. I cast you out, o’ Devil!”

  “No! I cast you out!” The preacher countered, his finger shaking as though it were a wand of great power.

  “Preacher man, don’t be so naïve! God is a villainous beast and he plays not with the games you toy at. Your morality is a bent up tawdry outfit to cover up your puniness. Your fears are your blanket, your god your fears. You don’t know god. You only know bewilderment under a fog of certainty. God, the true god that haunts this world and the beyond, is a god of great displeasure. On that, you are certain. But it is also a god of great magic and wonder. It is a god of spirited motion that loves a good drink and a good hard hoedown. It’s a God of fear and loathing but also a god of grand irony. You know nothing of this. You speak on behalf of a hell, but you live in that already. Your mind shrunk to a fig of nothing. Your imagination a twig in a turd.”

  The preacher looked upon Fennel furious. Now it was Fennel's turn to be caught up in his words. He was hypnotized by his own eloquence, he didn’t notice the preacher literally leaping at him and taking them both in a pile onto the ground. The preacher intended to beat the devil out of him. Fennel wrestled with the preacher, overwhelmed by the mad smell of urine and mold that seemed to have sunk into the preacher’s attire. Fennel could have cast him off much easier, but the smell really got to him thus making their wrestling match last a lot longer than he had ever wished.

  At long last he kicked the preacher off him who continued to rant over and over, “Devil be gone!” Fennel looked at the mad man and then took account of himself sprawled out in the town square. Fennel began to laugh hysterically—this whole event catching him as rather amusing. He laughed and laughed. The preacher was ridiculous, but so too was Fennel. Fennel laughed, hoping to see the preacher join in, but the man of god merely sat up and stared into the beyond with eyes of victory. What a stupid, enjoyable encounter this has been.

  Fennel found to his dismay that his laughter had an echo—a resonance in the air that sang along with it in harmony. It was joyful, free, with a strong hint of the water in it—something that reverberated in the pure joy and absurdity that he felt right then and there. He looked up from his position on the ground to see across the plaza standing in the doorway of a whacked-out bar on the corner, equipped with a glass of red wine in her hand, the laughing face of none other than the screaming woman from the night past.

  Fennel stood up and dusted himself off. The woman threw back her drink and headed back into the bar. He looked over at the preacher and reached out his hand to help the ol' boy up. The preacher waved him off and Fennel decided their game had come to an end. The preacher stood up and got back on top of his stool and began to preach as though nothing had even happened. Besides the screaming woman, it seemed no one had even noticed their peculiar duel. They were wrestling Cain and Abel in the epoch lonely drama in front of the eyes of god.

  Fennel again giggled to himself at how stupid the whole affair had been. He thought about investigating the woman but figured he should wait for his sister. She had demonstrated such a profound interest in this frail creature. His sister would be most pleased with his discovery—but that thought made him most hostile inside, his good mood quickly evaporating as he was reminded of her two-faced plotting. She was up to no good and not in the way that Fennel approved.

  It was time to head back to the cave—the faint hint of glow in the sky above was making the black turn into the slightest shade of grease. He made his way toward the alley where he scampered up to the rooftops climbing a drainpipe like a rat. He then bounded toward home, letting his feet find the solid footing of the roofs and then launching further out. He let the air fly through his hair and he sang into the night, a cruel raven heading back to the bony nest.

  He was first back to the boat and he decided, whatever his sister was up to, she could find a different way back. He played the projector and unmoored from the dock. The black and white grainy images of a chef spilling pastries wobbling down a flight of stairs made him laugh as he woun
d his way up the labyrinthine channels. The mangrove roots sent their spindly limbs into the water, sucking up sea salt and making a chalk web around the edge of the water.

  Fennel landed the boat on the sand and started up a fire on the beach. The fire crackled in the humid air and he went back to the cave to find a small pouch hiding under his mattress. He tossed into the fire a possum tail, a wren tooth, cinnamon, and dried plantains. The fire sparked with each toss of his hand and Fennel sat before it increasingly in a daze—the fire hypnotizing in its brilliance.

  He reached out, placed his hands straight into the fire and said, “Hear me, as I call upon you, Marty McGuinn. I’m afraid my sister is behaving as you predicted. She is acting very, very bad.”

  Chapter 5

  Isabella bid adieu to the Barrister. He would probably walk into the dining room, spy some friends, and ask to join them at the table. She couldn’t imagine him sitting alone for long. He would drink their wine and eat their food and they would still leave thinking him the most charming of men. Such was his gift.

  Her feet pushed her out into the wetness of the Barrenwood night. She pointed her internal compass toward that delicate region where the Mortestrate touches the hem of the Miser’s Quarters. The wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods of Barrenwood, of course, were geographic neighbors. The two economic opposites were literally separated by the railroad tracks that headed out of town connecting Barrenwood to the high end shopping districts of Danderill then out toward the remote villas in Valencia, and then further out, if one ever wanted to really go that far, to the belching black smoke of Eskisehir. Beyond that, Isabella really had no idea. Barrenwood was plenty.

  Her lack of interest was a force of habit. She wasn’t allowed to go that far. Not only by word but by biology. Marty had forbidden many areas of the world she and her brother traveled near. They called it the sickness and this phenomenon of territorial delimitation simply made them painfully nauseous when they were somewhere or near someone they shouldn’t be. It was a rumble in the belly that stirred up their guts; a vomitus gurgling that churned inside them making their brows sweat and their pale faces all the more pale. She had seen children walking the streets tethered by a leash to their parents, but Marty had them tethered by an invisible rope of barf. They were captives even when he was off making bets in mud strewn slot machines. It did, of course, make Isabella more interested in those parts of the city that were off limits, but then again, she couldn’t do much about it.