Terry Persun's Magical Realism Collection

by Persun, Terry

  “This separation has allowed us to reach our peaks in both directions, something most people never get to do. I need you around.”

  “Thank you,” Jeff said.

  “You could never add pressure to my life. I paint better because of you. When you carry that part of me, I don’t have to.”

  “So, you’ll continue to paint?”

  “More than ever.”

  “Don’t get run down. We don’t need another illness.”

  “Check on me from time to time.”

  “I will.”

  * * *

  The divorce went through quickly and easily. Lewis felt the loss more than he put on, crying privately for hours at a time over the loss of Brittany and Christopher. In many ways they had stabilized his life, and now were gone. In a confused rush of unspent love, he painted several works of Brittany from memory: her eyes were most important in them. It would be difficult for people to keep from looking into those eyes.

  Just as he had told Jeffrey that he was nature, so it was, and without humans around to hold him to that world, he delved deeper into nature. In a few years, all traces of Brittany were gone from him. Christopher remained as the child in himself. Common thought welcomed him daily and his paintings became frantically wild and unforgiving, yet traces of childhood could be found in an odd shape here or the twinkling, playfulness of color there. The paintings became compelling and innocent, but with death just around the corner, unforgiving. It had quickly become his best work, and sold as such.

  Jeffrey wanted Lewis to move or enlarge the cottage, but Lewis was perfectly happy where he was. “There is something missing, though,” he told Jeffrey.

  “What? Anything.” They were walking around the field in autumn. The leaves had begun to change and the tall weeds were brown and dried. Lewis touched the stone fence every twenty or so feet, because he liked the different ways the rock felt. He was in and out of common thought, so lacked the acute attention to follow too closely to what Jeff said. Up until that point, it had only been business anyway, and Lewis frankly wasn’t interested.

  “So, what is it, Lew?”

  “I sometimes miss having...” Lew was lost in the bushes following a snake which was sliding slowly towards the brook.

  “You okay?” Jeff asked.

  “I’m sorry. I’m preoccupied. Thinking, I guess.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay. You’ve been in and out all afternoon. I think you could use some sleep.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, what was it you were saying?”

  “Oh, that. Companionship.”

  Jeff laughed. “Companionship? Don’t you get laid enough when you go on trips?”

  “I don’t mean that.”

  “You don’t mean a real relationship, do you?”

  “I think I do.”

  “You think? Well, do you have anyone in mind?”

  “No.”

  “You ought to start with that.”

  Lew snapped himself out of common thought, away from the snake, the rocks. “I need to meet people, someone.”

  “I can arrange that, but God knows, I’m no cupid.”

  “I know.” Lew lowered his eyes.

  “You okay?”

  “I think so,” Lew smiled. He was kidding Jeff, but it took Jeff a minute or two to realize it.

  “You’re spooky sometimes.”

  “I’m just tired.”

  “Then sleep. Why have you been overworking? God knows you don’t need the money. By the way, talking about money, I pulled some out of stocks to...”

  “Do what you think you have to. It’s your problem.”

  “Just thought I’d tell you.”

  “I know.” Lewis looked around at the treetops for color, registering patches here and there. Nothing happened by any organized plan, and each year the first signs of color came from different trees, different areas in the small horizon that surrounded the cottage.

  “I’ll have a small party, invite some single girls I know.”

  “You know? What about Marsha, she have any friends I haven’t met?”

  “I guess,” Jeff said. “I’ll ask her.”

  “Or we’ll go out once in a while.”

  “This isn’t a very big town, Lew. And if you want to go to the city or anything, your chances for meeting someone might go up, but the chances they’d be willing to move out here with you, well that’s another story.”

  “You said I’m getting better known in the private sector.”

  “Yes, but you want someone who loves you, not someone who loves your money, or loves the art alone.”

  Lewis turned and looked into Jeff’s eyes, “Do I?”

  Slowly Jeff said, “That’s what you should want.”

  “My art is me.”

  “I know, I know,” his arm went up to brush the words away, like swatting at gnats. “A woman’s love is different.”

  “You’ve said that sometimes you think Marsha loves you for the money.”

  “Lew, for Christ’s sake, that’s said only as a joke. I don’t really think that.”

  “Oh. So how do I tell whether they love me or my art? With me it’s as though both are the same.”

  “It’s not easy. They lie.”

  “Nature doesn’t lie.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Nothing, I guess, just the truth.”

  “Fine, Lewis, but you can’t fuck nature.”

  “No, but it can fuck you.”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” Jeff belly laughed. “You’re a riot. I’d say you’re right though. In a lot of ways, it’s fucked you.”

  They were on their final stretch around the field, on their way back to the cottage near the part of the fence that opened up to the old tractor road.

  “Let’s go this way,” Lew said.

  “Past the tree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still...”

  “I do.”

  “But...”

  “It’s been a long time since I had a breakdown. Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.”

  “I was thinking about that the other day.”

  “Do you think talking to the tree will bring it on?”

  “No, not at all. I come out here and actually become part of the forest now. Not totally, I know that. Only through the tree. I see the Indian all the time, even in the house, the car. I see snakes, opossums, porcupines, all the time. I know the trees, not by where they are, but by what they look like, feel like, what they are, you might say. People don’t really look at trees, or try to recognize them, because they don’t move. People remember where they are, not what they are.” Lewis stopped in the path. “It only happens the right way sometimes.” He pointed down the overgrown road. “Wouldn’t you recognize that tree anywhere? If it was uprooted and put in New York City?”

  “You’re right.” Jeff stood next to Lew. “I remember the first time. That same branch. Doesn’t that tree ever change?”

  “It hasn’t for a while. Even if its appearance did change, if it lost a limb...”

  “A branch.”

  “Whatever. It would be the same tree.”

  “I suppose so, but that doesn’t convince me of its personality, that it’s a spirit or anything.”

  “But you admit to its uniqueness.”

  “In appearance only. Just visual.”

  “Well, there’s more,” Lewis said with such authority and confidence that Jeff left the subject alone, just dropped it.

  CHAPTER 16

  FINDING LOVERS WAS EASY for Lew. He and Jeff were both very good looking. Plus, he had money, plenty of it. And there were always art students, fledgling artists, and women just looking for part of the mystery. But Lewis had a difficult time getting to know these women, and he didn’t open up often enough for any of them to get close to him. Nonetheless, he found companionship, serial companionship. Every six months or so, he found himself
dating, or living with, a woman he no longer wished to have around. Each relationship began similarly, with whomever was aggressive enough to approach him. Seldom did he drive himself to make first contact. Marie was one of those few.

  It happened, in fact, in the grocery store. Jeff, Marsha, and Robert were on vacation in Europe. There was no one to buy groceries for Lew, Marsha usually did that, so he decided, rather than use the maid for that purpose, to go into town himself. He seldom shopped, but was feeling fresh and adventuresome.

  Marie had moved into town eight months earlier. She had transferred in from Denver and was having a hard time adjusting to the new location. The grocery store wasn’t crowded, and she seemed to be wandering: removing shelved items, putting them back, then going on again with very little in her cart.

  “Are you looking for anything in particular?” Lew said, after seeing her pick up and read the label of almost every pasta sauce container the store carried.

  Her hair, he noticed from the back, was long and black and curly, maybe permed. When she turned, the hair glistened as it twisted in the air, then fell slowly back down to rest. It even looked soft, like goose down, not sprayed with hair spray until it was almost a solid clump. When she turned to answer him, her eyes were sad, blue highlights around brown eyes, blue mascara on black lashes, pale lipstick which matched her blouse, a well-worn copper-pink color softened through multiple washings.

  “Do you work here?” she asked in return.

  Lew made a small laugh, “No, you just look like you’re searching.” He pointed, then retracted his arm and touched his stubbled chin and quickly became embarrassed about his surly appearance.

  “I’m nutrition-conscious.” Her full lips moved more slowly than it took the words to get out of her mouth, leaving them still in motion after the words had stopped coming.

  Lewis fumbled, but, as I said earlier, was in one of his more aggressive, talkative moods, perhaps because he had been let alone for a while. “I probably look like some derelict,” his eyes focused downward, guiding her eyes also, first to his pulled loose shirt, then to his unbelted and slightly sagging jeans. He also rubbed the stubble of his cheek and brushed his uncombed hair back with his hand. He quickly began to tuck in his shirt.

  She laughed. “Don’t bother, it ruins your look.”

  Lewis laughed too, “Which is?”

  “I’m not quite sure, half clown, half politician. I’d say, a politician trying to look casual.” She looked up into his face then, and said, (he has always remembered this) “You don’t look like you’d fit, quite right, into anything.”

  “I don’t even fit into this world most of the time,” he said.

  “I believe it.”

  “Do you?”

  The conversation got too serious suddenly, so Marie asked if Lew had a job in town.

  “Not really.”

  “Not really?” she asked. “I thought maybe we worked near one another.”

  “I work at home, kind of.”

  “Insurance!” she said, pointing a long, perfectly manicured finger at him.

  “Artist.”

  “Really?” She cocked her head and looked sidewise at him, in curious disbelief.

  “Lewis Marshal,” he held out his hand.

  “I know that name.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You live here?” she said, as though it was unbelievable that anyone would choose to live where she had felt so uncomfortable for the past eight months.

  “Outside of town. In the woods.”

  “In a tent with no water?” She laughed quickly as though she were now embarrassed to be in his presence.

  Lewis found her change towards him adorable. “You live here?”

  “For the past eight months. I transferred in from Denver.”

  “Beautiful city. Nice countryside. The mountains and all.”

  “Yes.”

  “Look, I could, well, show you around.”

  “Not much to see.”

  “The park, the mall and the grocery store,” he said laughing.

  “There’s always the movies.”

  “And dinner. Nutritious dinner,” he alluded to her label reading with a nod of his head.

  She stared at him for a few moments, as though sizing up the situation. “All right,” she said, and they exchanged phone numbers and addresses.

  Later, remembering a sort of awkwardness between them, Lewis questioned his own instincts, so he called Jeff in his hotel in England, just to talk with someone, to get approval. Oddly enough, even on first meeting, Marie didn’t seem like just another object to have around for a year. There was something to her, unlike the other women, something strangely hidden and sad. He had seen it in her eyes. It was more than just loneliness, more than just a mild shyness. Lewis wanted to reach into her, as he had learned to reach into common thought, and understand her more fully. That, to Jeffrey, was reason enough to pursue Marie. “You’re interested?” he said. “That’s a first. I’d say go for it.”

  “You think?”

  “Show some of that Marshal charm, she’ll love it.”

  “Not from me.”

  “What do you need, for her to grab your crotch? Haven’t you had enough of those women? Just do it. It doesn’t hurt. Do you good.”

  “Okay!” Lew said, slapping his hand onto the table.

  While he was still enthusiastic and excited, just after slamming the phone down after his short talk with Jeff, Lewis picked the phone back up and dialed Marie’s number.

  She picked up almost immediately. “Hello.”

  “This is Lew.”

  “Lew? Oh, from the store. Goodness, I didn’t expect a call this soon.”

  “I just thought, like we were talking, tonight maybe.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Well, you don’t have to.”

  “No, that’s fine. I just didn’t expect... Actually, I didn’t think you’d call. I’m glad you did.”

  “Are you?” he said lamely.

  “Don’t sound so down about it. I’d love to do something with you tonight.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Great, I’ll be waiting.”

  “Thanks,” Lew hung up then and started to walk away. Just then he remembered he didn’t tell her what time he’d be there. As he reached for the phone, it rang. He picked it up and said, “Seven.”

  Marie laughed. “Fine,” she said.

  Lewis liked the way things, even the phone call, fell into place, the way they seemed to roll smoothly.

  During the hours before seven, Lew unpacked his groceries, had a beer, and took a walk. The cottage felt especially comfortable that day. The sun washed over the field like a benevolent lover caressing it with warmth. The stone fence showed through the field grass, its heaviness, its mass, a permanent wall inside Lewis. In his imagination, he could be next to it and see into its dark crevices, see spider webs and ants, see the dust of dried pollen and dirt carried from the forest to the fence. He knew the fence like a friend, which stones were loose, which were not. He knew its many colors: white, red, black, blue, and its many geometric shapes.

  The trees in the enchanted forest called to him, asked him to visit with more than just his mind. So he went there and sat: the familiar pine needle bed, the rock and run. Only a trickle of water flowed. A breeze pushed down from the sky and brushed across Lewis. Memories, like old photographs, flipped one after another through his mind. A tree lifted its roots out of the ground and danced, its branches swiping dangerously close to his face. The rock he leaned against rolled, trying to crush his fingers, the stream spit water at him, and he knew, while he struggled to pull from common thought, that it was happening again.

  He crawled to the fence and lowered his head onto it much too hard. His hands grasped at the solidness of the stones. The hallucinations had stopped, but he still felt them, all around him, a sensation at the edges of his skin. He lifted himself up and glanced out over the field and it calmed him. He waited, thought
about Marie, thought about himself. He needed to paint what he had seen, get it out of himself. Pushing himself to his feet, Lew rushed back to the house. Upstairs, he took a canvas and penciled out what he had seen, rushing the pencil lead over the textured surface. He faced the large window overlooking the field and used the field to hold him calm and keep him centered while he worked. At one point, he wiped his arm across what he thought was his sweaty forehead, and found blood there.

  He hesitated. Was it real blood or just another vision? He touched his forehead with his fingers and found it sore. There was a lump and a small crevice, sticky with blood. At the sink, in the mirror, he saw a lump and gash going down over his right eye. He put down his pencil and washed his face and head, holding a towel to his forehead to compress the wound until the bleeding stopped completely. It wasn’t a big cut, but the bump was already black and blue.

  Lewis went back to the rough. As he worked, the feeling of craziness waned as though his working it out reduced its effect on him. He looked at the clock and realized he’d have to get ready to meet with Marie soon, so he rushed the rest of the work. He had drawn in enough to work with, plenty actually. He had gotten so serious about putting it down that he overworked it, spent much more time on details he would normally, if working on any other painting, have left out. He stepped back and sighed in relief. He felt so much better inside. Calmer. The impending danger had been spit out onto the canvas. He would be done with it, get it outside himself, so that it was part of the real world and not part of him.

  I tried to help him, tried to push deeper inside and make myself known, but all that happened was that Lewis saw the Indian pointing. It smiled favorably and then vanished. I tried again to appear as I was, not as a spirit, and just as my own image began to coalesce inside his head, he turned his thoughts and mind away, went downstairs and began to get ready for his date. I let loose, but rejoiced in knowing I had gotten as far as I had.

  While he was gone on his first date with Marie, I explored the enchanted forest for a trigger, something which might have snapped him into his hallucinations, a key of some sort. I actually expected to find what it was in nature that had pushed dear Lewis over his crumbling edge. There was nothing there I had not already known intimately. In fact, the pines and shrubs were also concerned about him, as were nearby squirrels, snakes, raccoons and opossums. During the time he was inside common thought, he had affected the whole area. They had seen his illusion and were frightened by it, not only for themselves, but for him as well. It confused them and alarmed them. Lewis had opened so widely into common thought during this particular incident that it was easy for every plant and animal in the area to become part of him. Easily confused, a few young squirrels and opossums shivered in the underbrush in misunderstanding and fear. The raccoons, on the other hand, took it all very well, as though they themselves were some sort of oracles and were used to such things. Something I didn’t know about raccoons was their quick belief and sure understanding of human thought. When I inquired, it all became clear. The one raccoon, from Lewis’ past, and ones before him had had such contact. It seemed that raccoons passed on their experiences, not in stories and tall tales, but biologically and psychically. Certain experiences were passed from parent to child, not specifics, but enough to allow a sort of deja vu, which, in turn, leads to easy adaptation.