Ben Soul

by Richard George

doesn’t go away, either.” Olive furrowed her brow with her thoughts.

  “Someone, someplace, describes God as ‘ineffable effulgence,’ that is, a radiance beyond description. Human life would burn up in such brilliance. We need the shadows, too. We can identify the light because the darkness defines it. We can identify the dark, because the light marks its boundaries.” Olive shook her head. “I don’t know if that makes sense, in words. The idea I’m trying to say makes sense to me, but words don’t capture it all.”

  The Swami joined in again. “Consider destruction and creation. This is an idea I picked up reading excerpts from the Hindu Upanishads. To create something, we must destroy something. For example, to make flour we must destroy wheat grains. Is this destruction and creation good or bad? One can argue either side of the question.” He patted his stomach, encased, today, in a white shirt under a vest he had unbuttoned before the threads holding the buttons broke.

  “It’s yin and yang,” Shu Wong said. “Hot balances cold, earth balances water, wood balances fire, and so on. Too much one way, too much hot, for example, is disharmonious. One must add cold to restore the balance. It’s basic Taoist belief.” Way Wong went to the teapot and poured himself another cup.

  Willy looked out the window. “Dark is coming on,” he said. “It’s time I went to the llamas. They grieve, too.” He stood and untied his apron. He wore his customary briefs under it, and nothing else. “Do you want me to come back and help clear up, Rosa?”

  “I’ll help,” Elke said. “I’m not quite ready to go back to the manor house. It’s so empty.”

  “We’ve all got an empty place,” Ben said. “Even me. I still haven’t wrapped my mind around it, you know, that La Señora is gone.”

  “Something that big takes time to get used to,” Emma said. She stood, gathered up her crockery and flatware, and took them to the kitchen. One by one, they all helped in clearing their dishes away, before they went to their homes. Rosa and Elke loaded the dishwasher, started it, and settled into a booth, Elke’s head on Rosa’s shoulder. It was much later that night that they woke up and went upstairs to Rosa’s room.

  Faces in the Waves

  Dickon found Ben on the beach staring out at Obaheah Rock. A storm to the west had the seas running high. Butter stood beside Ben, her tail wagging gently. Ben’s hands hung at his sides. The gray in his hair shone silver in the sea mist. Dickon called out Ben’s name. Ben started, surprised. His gray eyes re-focused from some far distant place. He smiled vaguely at Dickon. Butter turned to Dickon, her tail wagging more vigorously. As Dickon drew close, Ben raised his hand, and brushed at his eyes with the back of it.

  “I thought you might be here,” Dickon said. He came up even with Ben and put an arm around Ben’s broad shoulders. He nuzzled Ben’s ears. Puzzlement creased Dickon’s face. Ben was so distant. He scratched Butter behind her ears. Ben and Dickon stood, looking out over the sea. Dickon’s green eyes teared in the wind; they were pools of green mystery. The waves whirled and twisted at the base of Obaheah.

  Then Ben slipped awkwardly from Dickon’s embracing shoulder. “I was just looking,” Ben said, “at the waves when I started seeing faces in them.”

  “Pretty boy faces?”

  “No,” Ben said, smiling briefly at Dickon’s jest. “Faces of my dead.” He fell silent, staring out at the waves. “So many people I know have died,” he continued. “My grandparents and parents, to begin with. That’s so long ago I remember their general presence more than I remember what they looked like. I’ve got photos, of course. Someplace. I can’t quite call them up, not as sharp images.” Dickon raised his hand to comfort Ben with a touch on his shoulder, but some distance in Ben’s attitude stopped Dickon’s gesture.

  Ben went on, still staring at the waves dancing like Cossacks against the rock. “I remember other faces more clearly. Minnie Vann, for example, or Hardin. When I think of them, I can see the pain they were in written across their faces. It’s much easier, though, to see them younger, alive, and whole. I see Hardin, as he was in high school, so young, so naïve, so full of hope. I remember Minnie as the robust woman who never let a pretty girl pass unnoticed.” He turned to Dickon.

  “I’ve seen so many dying people,” he said. “Sometimes I wake up from a nap and see Len’s face as it was the night before he died. He was asleep, and the weariness and struggle to breathe had carved deep lines into his cheeks and around his eyes. Funny thing, when he was laid out in his coffin, all that stress was wiped away, or padded with makeup, or something. Death robbed his face of the character he’d built up over his life.”

  Butter sat next to Ben and leaned her head against his knee. He stooped sideways to pat her head and straightened up again. “Someone told me, years ago,” he said, “that a person spends the first half of their lives gathering things and people, and the second half letting go of the things and people they’ve gathered.” He frowned and stared down at his feet. Then he smiled, and looked up at Dickon. “Nobody warned me that I’d collect a new important somebody in the middle of letting so many go.”

  Dickon smiled back, and reached out to fold Ben into his arms. Butter thrust her head between their legs, lest she be forgotten.

  “Why did all this come up today?” Dickon asked.

  “I woke up from my after-lunch nap dreaming of La Señora,” Ben said. “She looked just like the last time I saw her, frail as crystal and strong as steel. It just went on from there. I’m glad the coffin was closed for her funeral.”

  “That’s becoming more common. I prefer it, myself.” Dickon chuckled. “It’s easier to gloss over the deceased’s flaws if his face isn’t right in front of you.”

  “Secrets of the profession, I suppose,” Ben said. “Better you do those things, like funerals, than me. I’ve had a bellyful of funerals. By the way, did I tell you that you did a nice job for La Señora?”

  “Yes, thanks again. It was hard for me to do.”

  “My hard part comes tomorrow, when John Diss reads the will. I suppose we should all gather in the library at the manor. It was a favorite room of hers.”

  “Sounds like the plot for an old British murder mystery.”

  “Do you see faces, Dickon?”

  “Every time I look at some one.”

  “I mean, do you see faces in your dreams? Or,” he gestured toward Obaheah Rock, “in the waves, or the clouds?”

  Dickon considered. “No, or not very often. Most of the time I dream about houses, or running away from something. When I do dream about people, they are too far away for me to see their faces.” He looked at the waves. “Sometimes I see wild horses in the waves, prancing and galloping around the rocks. I don’t look at the clouds much. They’re usually a solid mass of gray.”

  “Well, here, maybe. Where I grew up, they floated white or gray or black across the dark blue sky. They changed shapes as they wandered overhead. In the summers, anyway, Hardin and I used to lie on our backs in the fields and tell each other stories about the shapes the clouds made.” A bold gull landed on a bit of cliff not far away. Butter raced over, barking, to warn off the intruder. The gull ignored her.

  “I will miss La Señora,” Ben said. “I’d guess you all will miss her more. You knew her longer.” A weary sadness pulled Dickon’s cheeks toward his jaw. Had Ben been looking then, he’d have seen Dickon looking older than his years.

  “Maybe. I don’t think there’s much percentage in second-guessing who might be sadder than someone else. La Señora made a big difference for a lot of us.”

  “For me, too,” Ben said.

  “That reminds me,” Dickon said. “La Señora had a message for you. She said that strength lies in joining bamboo with clay.”

  “Did she say what that meant?”

  “She didn’t know.”

  “We’ll find out when we need to know, I guess.” Ben turned to look out on the sea again.
“I think the storm’s not too far away,” he said.

  “The paper said it’s about eight hours off shore,” Dickon told him. “My place, or yours, for supper?” The gull left the cliff; Butter came back toward Dickon and Ben.

  “Mine. Dickon, we should choose one place to be ours. This ‘yours-and-mine’ routine feels too distant since we so publicly committed ourselves.”

  “I guess so. Besides, everybody in the Village knows when we visit each other. The big question is, my place out by the ocean, your place near the Station, or some third alternative?”

  “What do you think, Butter?” Ben knelt to stroke the dog’s head. She wagged her tail, making a fan in the sand. “No comment, eh? Just be sure the food and water dishes go where you go. And the treat cupboard. All right, I’ve got it.” He looked up at Dickon and grinned. “Butter’s easy. We’re the problem children.”

  The Way of the Will

  John Diss studied the papers in front of him on the table while the Villagers gathered. Rosa had closed the Café for the afternoon, Harry and Olive had closed the motel, and the Wong brothers had closed their emporium and gas station. They had come up in the funicular, two at a time, with Rosa by herself at the last. Everyone else had come up from the Village by way of the Chapel trail. They had come in a group, talking softly among themselves. Ben and Dickon had stopped by the