October

by Al Sarrantonio

  OCTOBER

  By Al Sarrantonio

  First Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2011 Al Sarrantonio

  Cover design by David Dodd / Copy-Edited by Patricia Lee Macomber

  Part of the cover image provided by : http://solstock.deviantart.com/

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  Moonbane

  Skeletons

  West Texas

  Kitt Peak

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  Halloween & Other Seasons

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  FOR CHARLIE GRANT,

  THE FATHER OF US ALL

  JOHN OF LOURDES: Was there another place to go?

  Was there another season

  At the end of days,

  That led, finally, to Winter?

  THE PROPHET: Yes. And already You know its name.

  -EDWARD, LORD OF YORKE

  The Prophet of Time

  There are men from cold Northern Lands

  And one, from farthest South

  Equal parts Snake, and Worm, and Lizard,

  Who is their Lord, and dwells within them, and,

  When he is wont, makes them die.

  -SEBASTIAN CAPLET

  The Lord of Death

  And then they made fire to him,

  And prayed,

  And sought to ward him off

  For one year more.

  -ROBERT HAMBLING

  The Druids

  1

  October 1st

  There was a time when all the world was green and cold, when all men were as one man, and the days echoed, mountain through valley to mountain, with October smell. There was a time, one beautiful morning, when all the world smelled of apples.

  James Weston reached his hand up, admiring the gold sheen of the hairs on his arm, the sharp red line of plaid where his checkered shirt cuffed wrist, the long curve of his fingers, the dirt beneath his fingernails. He reached his hand up slowly, imagining himself in a movie, not the one he had been in but the one he played in his mind to amuse himself.

  His mind was often, to him, a better place than the world. In his mind, the world could be green and cold whenever he wanted. Mountain could call to mountain, apples could bloom, pink-white petals to hard ripe, fruit, whenever he wished.

  In the movie of his mind, he froze the hand, admiring the warm new sun on it, the morning cold; and then he began to move again and the hand touched and then grasped the apple it had reached for and then froze.

  Admire the apple, he thought in his mind's sound track. Feel the taut skin stretched tight as a woman's abdomen over child. It holds similar fruit; the fruit is burst leaf to flower. Remember the flower.

  His index finger moved up to stem, traced the line of stem to branch.

  Umbilical. Life cord.

  He tugged at the apple. He felt the reluctance in the stem, the resistance to letting go.

  Choice, his sound track told him, the cameras of his eyes locked in stasis on the reluctant apple. He felt his hand on it, pulling, gently insistent, felt the tree, roots, trunk, branch, pulling in reaction against him.

  My choice, he thought.

  His fingers tightened on the apple, began to twist.

  Mine.

  His fingers opened, letting the apple go.

  He watched the apple pull back up into the tree; the sigh of leaf against leaf in his head sound track became a joyful whisper.

  He laughed, swept his hand down in a long arc to the ground, to snatch a fallen apple. The tree's willing gift. His hand lifted to his mouth, the apple finding purchase between his teeth, good crisp juice squirting down his tongue into his throat.

  He took the apple from his mouth, laughed again, chewed his earned bite with relish.

  The dog at his feet looked up at him expectantly. "That's the way the world's supposed to work, Rusty," James Weston said, laugh half-leaving his mouth with his words, eyes darkening around the corners where thoughts were left to the emotions of the face.

  He put his hand into the long shag coat of the dog, rubbing deep, drawing solace, pleasure from the act.

  "That's the way," he repeated, almost inaudibly. His mind movie stared off over the dog and the valley of apple trees between two mountains, to a place where movies stopped and the world really was.

  He was a tall man, and lanky. Those who gave him a first look and little more often compared him to Abraham Lincoln. He had, in fact, played Lincoln in the movies not three months before. They had lengthened his forehead by waxing and removing a half inch of his front hairline; had thinned his hair, straightened the thick curls that tended to congregate to either side of his part; had changed the part from right to left. They had built his nose, made it longer, fleshier; deepened his eyes for effect—though his eyes, hooded and gray, already nearly matched Lincoln's own. He had learned to change his smile, from the slow thing that tended to blossom to full-blown grin, to a melancholy line that merely lengthened and creviced with dark humor. He had accentuated his stoop; had learned to hold his hands behind his back with solemn sadness. He had learned to weep without shedding tears; had learned to throw his leg over the arm of a chair when sitting in it, not so much sitting as hanging upon it, all angles, as a crane might look if forced to sit on furniture. He had learned to nod slowly, and speak thoughtfully and resonantly, though Lincoln's own voice was high and did not carry. He had learned to do all these things, and he had played through the Civil War, watched it unfold for him as it had unfolded for Lincoln, and Lincoln had slowly seeped into him, taking over his bones.

  On the last day of shooting, after his last scene, a wooing of Mary Todd shot out of sequence—having already watched, in other scenes, her dissolution—he quietly took off and folded Lincoln's coat, and placed it on a chair, black stovepipe atop the pile, walked from his trailer, and kept walking.

  He had been wearing then the same clothes he wore today, white stiff shirt, long pants and suspenders, and black shoes with thick soles, and the steps of six months had worn the soles down, and led him from Abraham Lincoln to here —to, he hoped, himself again.

  He felt the regular, quick bellows of the dog's huffing under his hand. The dog, a red setter with eyes that looked as though they held laughter, met his gaze and barked hoarsely, then continued to huff, tongue lolling.

  "What is it, Rusty?" he said, lowering himself to the ground, crossing his legs to meet the dog on his own level. "You hungry?"

  The dog huffed again, without enthusiasm. Around them were scattered the cores of half a dozen apples, equal dinner for himself and Rusty.

  "What is it then? Thirsty? Want to run?"

  In answer, Rusty lowered himself to the ground, paws before him sphinxlike, head resting on one forearm. "Tired?"

  Rusty shifted his head to his other forearm.

  Weston put his hand on the dog's head, rubbing deep. A sound not unlike that of a cat's purr issued from Rusty's throat and he closed his eyes.

  "Let me think," Weston said. He studied the
apple trees, spaced in files around him, studied past them the darkening autumn blue sky, the hard-edged cumulus clouds lazily sailing southeast. For a moment his thoughts slipped to metaphor: he thought himself a ship sailing southeast with the clouds, with sails full unfurled, heading from Vancouver, foreign port, mock America for a mock Civil War, to New York, home port—where life waited for him to begin again.

  He focused away from metaphor and saw the sky again; the clouds had moved beyond the trees and were gone, leaving him behind. Only clear, night-deepening blue remained, ocean or sky. Cold nevertheless. Maybe that part of his life, and the pain that waited for his living it again, could wait.

  Maybe he wasn't ready for that pain yet, again.

  His eyes shifted from sky to trees overhead.

  Maybe he could work, pick apples.

  He laughed and stood up. "All right, Rusty." The dog watched him contentedly as he stretched up, shouting at the protestation of his tired bones. It was early autumn, early in his life. They would sleep in the midst of apples. Tomorrow, like today, the chill would leave the world for a while as the sun played weakly at Indian summer. He would roll up his sleeves and stay in this orchard and pick fruit.

  "It's settled, we'll stay," he said to the dog.

  Unthinking, forgetful of the inner movie he had so recently reviewed, he ignored the fallen bounty around him, stretched his hand out to a nearby tree, and twisted an apple from its stem, with a viciousness that would have frightened him had he known it was there.

  2

  October 1st

  Where is Lydia? Teatime has passed, it's growing dark. You'd think she was still a child, so forgetful.

  Such a cold fall day, I can feel it through the window glass. The trees shorn of foliage, the apple orchards look like winter

  What is that feeling? A chill on my fingertips, running through my hand like electricity to my elbow, I know that feeling.

  The Time Machine.

  I laugh, pulled suddenly from the present, in the void between memories, between tired, broken axons, not knowing where I am or where I will land.

  Don't the metaphors ever stop?

  It's like this, some days. I laugh again, on the cusp between years. Alzheimer's disease. Presenile dementia. I know all about it, in the flashing moments such as this, when I belong to nowhere, anchored in it firmly. I know the Time Machine my mind has become.

  I laugh once more.

  No, the metaphors never stop.

  I feel content in these brief instants of clarity between present and past. Disembodied, but still myself. Not part of the continuum of physics, the meat-and-potatoes world. Mind. The Time Machine is my ill mind.

  If only I could control it. If only I could stay here, in this dream world of disembodiment.

  But always I land, the disease a firm hand on the controls (there, another metaphor!), and even now I feel it pressing so insistently against my spine, against the soft, lost sponge of my brain, guiding me to a landing.

  The Time Machine . . .

  Oh! Oh! The sky is falling!

  I laugh, thinking about Chicken Little, and Danny thinks I have forgiven him and puts his hand on me, but I push him away. Cold, the first chill morning of autumn, heat ticking through the radiators, frost covering the grass when I looked out the kitchen window and there he was coming home, the bastard. He entered through the back door smiling, sheepish, unrepentant, little huffs of breath steaming from the outside cold, all those toys in his arms for Lydia and the boys, that big Irish grin and everyone melted, melted for a little while, and the children playing in the parlor with their presents while he ran his big hands over me in our locked bedroom and we were wed once more.

  He puts his hand on me and I push him away again.

  "What's wrong?" he asks, and I try to rake his eyes out, but he holds my arms and hits me in the face once with the flat of his hand and laughs again. I tell him I will leave and he almost hits me again, but instead he laughs. "Remember Rhea?" he says. That was 1940, only ten years ago, and things haven't changed. Her husband, Brant, beat her, she tried to kill him but he beat her even worse, and the cops laughed about it and drove away. They called her Wildcat. I saw from the curb as I walked home from school. Her lip cut down one corner, two eyes black like a raccoon, I think he broke her nose but they didn't set it because he wouldn't bring her to the hospital, they had no money except for his beer. After the police left I watched the door close and heard him beat her some more. That's what happens when girls try to leave, the unwritten code of men. I felt sorry for her, but like everybody else I avoided her after that. When you try and fail, you're a failure. It was as if she had a disease. Wildcat, they called her, bad wife.

  So the children play and Danny laughs. But it is an uneasy laugh. To see me mad again he lies back and smokes a cigarette, looking at the ceiling with a wistful look on his face. Then he turns toward me, bedsprings creaking under him, and says quietly, but not gently, "It's not as if I love 'em, Eileen." He rolls back, staring at the ceiling, smiling. "You can always write about it," he adds. He concentrates on his cigarette, waiting for me to scream and beat at him or leave the room, so I leave, and I hear him just laugh once, a snort, and I wish I could hate him more (bad wife) but I know this is his only weapon against me, against memory. . .

  The Time Machine, back to the present . . .

  It's so dark now, the cold through the window, that horrible cold in my hand, my arm . . .

  Time . . .

  Eddie, stop eating like that!

  Pawing the food into his mouth as if he has two stomachs, ignoring me, just like his father. And he the youngest. He even laughs like Danny. I thought Bobby would be like Danny, the influence of proximity, but he's quiet and reads all the time. In my secret heart, where I keep my dreams, Bobby is my hope just as Lydia is my little girl and Eddie is lost to me. I dream for Bobby. Danny calls him names, when he's deep in his six-pack, yells at him for not going out for sports like his brother. Bobby answers by getting sullen. I fear for him because there's fire beneath his brooding.

  One day I tried to talk to him but he would not confide in me. It would be nice to have someone confide in me. Mary Wayne used to confide in me—

  "I just like to be alone," he said.

  My heart was bursting with hope for him, for myself. "I found some of the things you wrote."

  His face reddened in embarrassment and anger. It was as if I had asked him about wet-dream stains on his sheets.

  "It's only that—" I began, wanting to tell him how beautiful his thoughts are, that he should continue to express himself. But these words would not come out, only my fears. "I'm afraid you'll run away."

  His face was still flushed with anger. "Anything to get out of here."

  I didn't know what to say. A gulf between us, one I didn't know how to bridge. I realized that Bobby was lost to me, too. All children are lost to their parents. We never possess them—only cradle them until they learn to cradle themselves. From birth they are their own.

  "Never let guilt, or fear, rule you," I said to him, thinking of his father. I left him to his brooding, and I'm afraid, lying here next to Danny and his beery snores, that Bobby will indeed run away . . .

  Time. . .

  That freeze in my arm—I've felt it before . . .

  Again, to the past . . .

  Oh! The sky is falling! Bright red and gold! Chicken Little, just like they told us in grade school . . .

  Yes, Mother, I said, I lost my reader, please don't hit me, it was an accident. Please—

  But of course she hit me, and here I am with the sun going down, the sky cooling, and she's airing the quilts out on the line. They blow, giant autumn leaves, that's a metaphor. Mrs. Greene would approve. And, like Chicken Little, I say the sky is falling, which is something like a metaphor, red and gold and shades-of-brown leaves, dropping pieces of the sky. The sun makes patches of deep gold light on the spaces between the trees. It shines like a gold beam on the carpet of falling sk
y. Oh! The sky is falling! And it feels so good to dance away from the window, my pigtails flying out, I see them from the corners of my eyes, I feel like I'm in the sky, falling with the leaves, falling!

  Yes, Mother, I'm sorry I was making noise. No, I mean yes, I would like some supper. I'm sorry, I didn't think before I spoke. Please, Mother, I promise next time—

  "Damn you," I whisper fiercely as the door closes, but she doesn't hear and I clamp my hands over my mouth to keep from saying more. I'm sorry, God, for saying such a thing to my mother, but she hasn't been kind to me lately and I don't think it's all my fault. She thinks I don't know she wasn't married to my father, but I know. I found one of the letters he sends her with money. Columbus, Ohio. He must be a good man to do that. I may run away to him if she doesn't let me go to the party next week. I hear Mr. Fields out there now, in the parlor. I'll ask her when he leaves.

  Would that be a bad thing, God? To run away? I wonder if you can hear me up there. Above the falling sky.

  The sun is almost gone. Squinting, I see sparkles of it low through the oaks. The dropping leaves break up the sparkles and give them different colors. Mrs. Greene said I am good at reading, have a good imagination, but that my penmanship should be improved if I want to be a writer. I told her I would buy a typewriter. I think she thought it was funny, though she continued to look at me sternly. She doesn't think I'm silly, I hope. I do want to be a writer, unless I fall in love and marry a prince, and live in a castle. If that happens, I'll have supper whenever I like . . .

  The Machine once more, pulling me back to now . . .

  Lydia, is that you? Why don't you come? My arm, it feels frozen, as if it's made of cracking ice . . .

  And pushing me back, firmly, to then . . .