Terry Persun's Magical Realism Collection

by Persun, Terry

  Common thought was leery of accepting him, so allowed him only partial connection: sight and sound, but no deep-seated philosophical connection, no connection to deeper emotions.

  Lewis took in what he could. He roamed through the woods like an invisible being, climbed to the tops of trees, and dropped to the grasses. He took in a multitude of images from a multitude of angles. He opened as fully as he could, reaching out to plant and animal alike. Once he was there for an hour or so, individual plants and animals chose to open to him.

  Lewis rose from his protected, prone position, dressed warmly, opened the tent, and went for a long walk while remaining in common thought, allowing the sensation of joints and lungs, of eyes and ears and fingers, of something very strange to most of common thought, to translate its world into theirs. He was sharing his world. Lewis walked amidst the pines while listening to the wind whoosh and whisper through dense, needle-bound branches. Much of the first snowfall didn’t make it through to him. In fact, looking up, it was as though the snow disintegrated just before getting within reach. Yet, in common thought, Lewis felt the snow touch branches. As he got closer to the bare trees, Lewis listened for the moment when the sound of wind changed. At the threshold between the two sounds, he stopped, focused, and let in the juxtaposed sounds of white pines and hemlocks on the one side, and maples, birches, and oaks on the other. The two distinctly different sounds rushed through his ears for common thought to hear.

  When Lewis opened again, he was everywhere in the woods, like a soft cloth brushing against you, caressing, almost erotically. He remained at ease in common thought, reminiscent of the ease with which he made his morning sketches. He physically moved through the woods to the stone fence and into the field where he opened his arms and accepted the flurry of snow falling from the sky. Common thought hummed and whined and chattered inside his head. Noise and silence. Inside common thought, there was a beautiful silence in hearing without ears, a beautiful sight in seeing without eyes. Through Lewis, there was a level of sight and sound beyond common thought. Through his eyes and ears, a fantasy world opened up. Between he and common thought, all things could be touched in all ways. Twirling around and around in the middle of the field, his face skyward, his arms out, like a child trying to make himself dizzy, Lewis accepted all that lay around him, and all that lay around him accepted Lewis. He sat, then, in the middle of the field, making sure to face away from the cottage, and began his beautiful manipulations. Cautious of common thought’s reaction, Lewis gave a warning that he was about to experiment, just as the wind warns of its coming. He placed his own precursory ripples into the realm, pushing his own signatures outward. Soon, colors distorted, shapes changed, trees reached out towards him, the grass stretched and touched his hands. Unlike his horrifying hallucinations, Lewis willed these imaginings, no fear rode them like a fourth horseman, so no fear entered common thought. Without question, Lewis’ adjustments were accepted. He played this way for a long while, then put things back.

  Lewis stood and walked back into the woods where he stopped and repeated his experiments, this time creating paintings that showed a nature with the power of mobility, trees about to stand or bend, bushes just after reciting poetry. The images rushed out, like signatures of what was about to happen. The paintings portrayed a lively, natural world, one with thoughts and emotions. Lewis had broken through. I felt rejoiced, and that feeling spread throughout common thought like wildfire.

  Lewis danced with common thought, twirled and touched and purred. Then he came to me. I was the pointing Indian, he said, not in words but in images, sounds, nuances. I felt proud and honored to be the spirit he relied on. He imagined me as the Indian, as he had before, then he imagined himself as the Indian, as though we were one. He understood that we were one, that we had been as one for a long time. As the Indian, Lewis stepped closer to me, all in his mind, then, like a real spirit of nature, he stepped inside me, became me. His final turn placing his, the Indian’s, body inside my trunk. When a hand rose out of the trunk and pointed, I saw, with him, another Lewis, the outer Lewis, being asked to go out into the world. That Lewis was suddenly different. Just as he had created a newness in his paintings, Lewis had created another self, this one colored and shaped to deal with the human world. Somehow, he had managed to separate. Not that his human self was so much a part of that world that there was nothing else, as with Jeffrey, but that he could maneuver, he could journey through that world without fear of collapse.

  After expecting to fall completely into common thought, crazy or not, so he could feel again the exhilaration his art brought him, he had accidentally found two worlds he could function in, neither perfectly, neither exclusively, but two, totally distinguishable worlds.

  For several more hours, Lewis wandered around common thought territory experiencing and experimenting with a new understanding of himself and nature. Finally, his legs tired and his body cold, he returned to the tent, made dinner and ate. At dusk Lewis again walked out to the field, alone, without common thought. He stared at the sky which had opened to stars placed on a clean, black silk blanket. In a solitude which included common thought, Lewis accumulated his feelings towards himself, his family, and his work. Still, as difficult as emotions are, and as complex as they are, he placed temporary priorities on each. Back at the tent, chilled to the bone, Lewis undressed and tucked himself tightly into his sleeping bag. Warmth soon came back to his body. His muscles relaxed after shaking off the cold. Like a small boy on his first camping trip, he turned on the flashlight, inspected every inch of the inside of the tent, every seam.

  On the third day Lewis did not sketch. He awoke content that he had finished the job he had planned to do. The morning was colder than the other two had been and he moved more slowly. After a quick breakfast, where he stayed as close to the Coleman as possible without getting burned, Lewis packed everything into his back pack. On his return home, Lewis walked with common thought as his constant companion. Small deaths seemed less harsh as he learned to recognize the signatures of their happenings. Emotions rose and lowered, anger, hate, love, lust, all at once, all within his reach. All he needed to do was reach out and grab whatever he wanted, or take it all, let it all balance inside him: hate balanced with love, pain with elation. He leaned towards one emotion, then another, as each grew to importance. From many places at once, the same emotion would come at him, from the tops of trees, from under rocks, from fish and other animals. The mixture of natural things stayed inside him.

  For many years following that time, as long as he was within reach, we walked together like brothers, like friends, experiencing one another more intimately than ever before.

  Lewis planted his eyes on the cottage as soon as it came within sight. He watched it grow in size while it also grew in importance. The cottage was no longer an enemy, it was his home, the place where he worked, a haven. Once inside, rubbing his cold hands together, Lewis dropped his pack onto the kitchen floor and ran up the stairs. He attached a canvas to the easel and turned so that he could look out the window at the field. Taking up brushes and paints and palette, he began to work, completely open to nature yet within human thought.

  There are many degrees of consciousness for humans alone, and many more for common thought, so, having both, there was exponentially more for Lewis to manipulate and let work for him. While some inputs were blocked, others let in the world at large, whether focused or unfocused, as background or foreground. Lewis painted two canvases that afternoon and evening. Late that night, he put down his brushes and poured the last cup of coffee from the latest pot. He stood back. It had not translated as he had wanted, but he knew that it eventually would. He created from a place that had no visual counterpart. His hands were still learning to read his mind, and his mind was still experimenting. Time would allow mind and hand to grow together.

  He looked over, and sitting on the couch was the Indian. He let me control the arm as I learned to lift muscle and bone as Lewis knew it. I struggle
d and the Indian shook, jerked its shoulder. Lewis helped by urging me on. After a while, the arm lifted, the Indian pointed. A merging of minds had taken place, an interlocking of man and nature like never before. I held the arm out for only a moment, then let it fall. I had never felt what it was like to be mobile. Such an odd and interesting machine humans are. Lewis smiled in approval before turning away, taking his cup of coffee downstairs to his bedroom, where, finally, he would sleep in the comforts of a bed.

  Using his mind to help me, I stayed with the image of the Indian, tried to learn more about human mobility, how it worked instead of just how it felt to work. Lewis stayed in common thought at a location in the crook of my branch, the one he had fallen from as a child. Sitting there, he took in what I would take in, just as I would take it, trying to forget his ability to move, trying to understand immobility, while simultaneously, I learned the mysteries of mechanical movement. As you must know by now, we had joined, had learned to become one, together, yet separate in our own worlds.

  WOLF’S RITE

  TERRY PERSUN

  Booktrope Editions

  Seattle WA 2014

  Copyright 2003, 2011, 2014 Terry Persun

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

  Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

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  Cover Design: Simanson Design (simansondesign.com)

  Previously Published by Russell Dean and Company, Publisher January 2003

  Booktrope Editions Second Printing

  ISBN 978-1-935961-13-0

  Epub ISBN 978-1-62015-018-4

  DISCOUNTS OR CUSTOMIZED EDITIONS MAY BE AVAILABLE FOR EDUCATIONAL AND OTHER GROUPS BASED ON BULK PURCHASE.

  For further information please contact info@booktrope.com

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011903949

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book is for my wife, Catherine, who continues to show me it’s all right to do what I want. It is also for my daughter, Nicole, who keeps me curious and innocent, and for my sons, Terry and Mark, who support everything I do with grace and kindness.

  Additional thanks go to Marie Pompili who performed the first

  read-through of the original text, and to Robert Fulton who edited a later version, continually showing me what I had already written, rather than what I should have written. Also, thanks to Bradd Hopkins for his final edit and keen attention to every detail. The book reads better because of all those who helped.

  Terry Persun

  Port Townsend, Washington

  July 2002

  PART I

  CHAPTER 1

  HE KNEELED DOWN NEAR THE CREEK and looked closely into the still water trapped in a pool among the rocks. He fancied himself an Indian tracker and guide. Pointing at the fresh hoof print, he said—as though someone stood over his left shoulder—“It went this way.” He lifted his rifle in his right hand above his head in a triumphant gesture, and he smiled as he stood.

  One heavy boot came down hard over the hoof print, splashing droplets of water onto the rocks, obscuring those droplets that still marked the deer’s passing. He ignored the icy water that soaked the leg of his pants from mid-calf down and seeped into his boot, wetting his sock.

  His black eyes scanned the woods for movement. Most hunters would look for the deer’s shape or color for identity, but Llewellyn knew better. He always knew better. He had the instincts of the ancients. To see movement, become still. So, as his head turned, it would stop at intervals and wait. Nothing. He searched the ground for more tracks, looked for broken twigs, scuffed leaves. He listened intently and continuously.

  When he heard something snap, he looked up slowly, waited. The deer stepped again, and Lew caught the movement to the far left of his peripheral vision.

  As the deer looked away, Lew shouldered his rifle and waited. When the deer turned back to face him, he squeezed the trigger. The recoil pushed his shoulder back, cushioned by the muscles in his arm. The deer collapsed almost exactly where it had stood.

  “Painless,” Lew said.

  His sport here was to track and kill, just as he imagined himself doing when at work. He had often told his friends that the corporate world was every bit as barbaric as two Neanderthal tribes competing over a hunting territory. It wasn’t the land, he’d told them, it was the food on the land that they fought for. Then, much later, it distorted into only land, then religion or form of government and on and on. It no longer mattered why mankind hunted, fought or killed. Even though he could subsist on much less than he had, getting more had become essential, had become a measure of his merit. To battle was innate, nothing more.

  The job done, he rustled through November’s fallen leaves. He scratched his three-day beard with his fingernails. Took pride in noticing the increasingly stronger odor of the deer as he approached its still figure, crumpled unnaturally on the ground. The early morning sun speckled the dry leaves, firing the colors more brilliantly with its touch. The deer’s fur, too, was specked in sunlight, producing patches of light and dark brown like a spotted carpet.

  Lew unsnapped his hunting knife and withdrew it from its sheath. He stood over the deer, knowing with visceral certainty that it was dead and not merely wounded.

  He kneeled beside the fallen deer and grabbed the soft flesh of its belly with his left hand, stretching it enough to let the knife’s silver blade penetrate. With a quick jerk, he began to split its gut open. Several more jerks of the knife and blood spilled easily onto the leaves, trickling to the knees of his jeans. He scooped out the entrails then wiped the knife’s blade alternately along the deer’s fur and along his thigh until it was nearly clean. Lew grabbed the doe’s thighs and, with a great strength, threw them, causing her body to flip over. Before it could bounce back, Lew gripped the fur and skin along her back and, pulling up, shifted the weight of her carcass.

  He removed a short piece of rope from his pocket. At each end he tied a loop, then knotted the middle around the doe’s hind legs. Finding a branch thick enough and strong enough to bear the deer’s weight, Lew slipped it through the two loops, brought it to his back, along his waist and, gripping it tightly, white-knuckled, began to drag the deer back the way he’d come.

  “The Wolf has killed again,” he said, wanting the words to be made physical through waves of sound. His nickname had been Wolf for as long as he could remember. He didn’t know where the name had come from, his father perhaps, or kids at school. It was just who he was. Even his facial features were wolf-like.

  The woods seemed quiet. The only sounds were the deer sliding through fallen leaves, and his own footfalls, heavy and sure. He crossed the now-sparkling stream; sunlight pushed through the open treetops. Resting for only a moment, he pulled harder, walked faster, up the hillside he had recently climbed down while tracking the doe. One foot slipped when he neared the top and he slid to his knees. “Fuck,” he said, “almost there, too.”

  The deer weighed nearly a hundred and fifty pounds dressed. His momentum was lost, so for the final few yards, Lew turned around and faced the deer. Placing the branch in the crook of his arms he dug his heels into the soft topsoil and pulled, using all his strength and weight. He moved up the steep grade slowly but evenly. Once on level ground, he pulled the carcass another forty feet or so to a small field and rested there.

  He sat, catching his breath after the effort of the uphill drag. The warm sun reduced the chill in the air to a memory. Still, his wet foot was becoming uncomfortable now that his mind was off the hunt. Lew looked up into the cloudless sea of sky, thankful for the sun’
s appearance after several days of overcast skies and drizzling, off-and-on rain. He patted his wet pant leg, forced his fingers through his thick black hair and scratched his beard again. It was at the length where it began to itch.

  Heaving to his feet, Lew started across the field, knowing that once he got to its edge and entered the woods again, it was all down hill to the cabin. As he crossed the field, he tried to soak up as much sun as he could, letting it bathe him in heat and light.

  He would be the first one back. Of the three of them, he was the best hunter and tracker. Joe probably wouldn’t even get a deer at all. And Gary would take longer, but he’d try harder, too. Gary seldom gave up at anything; never had, as far as Lew knew. He gave of himself pretty freely, doing volunteer legal work for the poor as well as occasional food-line duties at his church. But he lacked one thing that Lew possessed: the killer instinct.

  At the base of the hillside sat the log cabin. It belonged to Gary’s family, had been part of the family history for many years. His great grandfather had built it originally. Several years ago Gary had converted it from a two-room shed to a spacious three-bedroom hunting cabin. Once Gary got his law degree, he saved his money and had most of the cabin done himself. One of his uncles, Uncle George, helped with time and labor, since he lived much closer to the retreat than Gary did. Now the cabin had a large living room, separate kitchen and two full baths. The cabin had been put in all three of their names so that each could feel free to use it as his own.

  Lew couldn’t relate to such things. Besides, the fact was that Lew’s job took up a hell of a lot more time than Gary’s, much of it necessary social time, hobnobbing with clients.