The spring came early. The junkman who lived under the tresses of the rusted iron bridge came out to see Cider walking through the foliage and flowers. “I thought that you were dead,” he said. “Nah,” said Cider. “I allowed that you had died,” the junkman said. “Well I didn’t,” said Cider. “I hadn’t seen you around,” the junkman said. “I was in jail,” Cider said. “What did they get you for?” “I was in a crowd of bad people.” “You got caught?” “I guess you might say that.” “The only trouble I ever got in came from getting caught,” the junkman said. “I get it.” “You get it.” “Yes.” “Well alright then.” Cider went up the road that was chipped and broke with gravel leading to an inn. He’d been in service to a laundry, a woodshed. In the road he stopped, glanced up at the tin sign supported by poles. A gust of hot wind whiffed by like dragonsmoke. The sun a wavering disk. Reaching behind him he removed his wallet from the side pocket of his sweats. He removed the photographs, tore them to shreds. The three dollars folded and put into his front pocket. He walked to the bar, hopped on a barstool, examined the bottles on the shelf. They were arranged tallest to shortest before a mirror, odd blue poisons. Behind the bar a battered cooler where paint chips floated with the bottles and cubes of ice. He called to the barkeep for the price of a shot. Jack Daniels, one dollar a shot. Sold. Warm honey down the gullet. Again. And again. And again and again. He was already aware of his mistake before the wave of nausea hit him. Achilles spotted him and stepped over. “Hey, where is old T.A.?” “He’s got a job.” “Another casualty of the workforce, eh?” “They’ve taken so many young men,” Cider said. At after-hours he found that he hadn’t known this place. Five men sat at a cardtable. A broken sofa propped on cinder. As were the tabletops. A slow pour from out a mason-jar into a Styrofoam cup. The bottom sizzled away. A slow pour to the floor. Jim saw him and smiled. His bald black head, his eyes. He exhaled out both of his giant nostrils. “How you been, kid?” “Alright. You?” “Oh, been getting by.” “Well.” Cider wobbled sickly to the washroom. A single bulb burned. Hung by a strip of wire. Bent and dented walls set around the putrid porcelain toilet bowl. He turned the lock and leaned against the corner to study the hydra of corroded pipes above. A hidden warrior here. He did not know whether to shit or vomit. Something was going on in his lower intestine. Mucus clogged both nostrils, his tongue tasted the vomit at the back of his mouth. An ache in his lower spine. Out into the bar again. The interior of the building papered in old signs, the floor a dark woodwork, planks set like in a shed, stained papers about the place. “I’m done,” he told the wall. He turned. “I’m done,” he told a stranger. Dark faces, dead to the world, saw him pass and he must nod to each, look sustained, a plausible entity. He heard voices rising in laughter. Smeared snickering faces in the dim red bulbglow. In the back in shadow people were breeding in muffled groans. His pounding heart, his contracting throat, ragestrangled. Piss in the corner like dried gum. Foul liquor odor. The back wall packed with broken shoes all cluttered in the dark. He staggered around. A drunken man in a five gallon hat stood and shoved him. Cider’s temper became lost to him. He stood straight, raised his elbow, and clocked the man in the jaw with his bone. The man punched him in the head. Cider raised his hands, palms forward, steadily stepping back. Exactly when the man acknowledged this, the kid stuck his palm forward and cracked the man in the head. He then was hit on the back of the head with a bottle. He heard the noise and turned around and was hit three times with fists. He tumbled sideways. Stood straight. Was hit again. He rushed to the exit. A large man raised his hand but Cider pushed him and when the man lost balance on one foot he pushed him again and the man fell. Cider leapt over him. He punched a tottering boy with raised fists. Someone hit him in the back of the skull with a barstool. Colors exploded in his brain. He fell to his knees. He collapsed. He stood as fast as he could. Someone had picked up a table. Immediately the crowd swarmed the man and he disappeared. The table reared upward over the crowd then plummeted down heavy and fast and hard. It landed on no head but Cider’s. He heard something in his head crack. The place and everyone there turned into a searing white sunlight. His eyes rolled up into his skull and his bowels gave out. He unmistakably heard his mother call him inside. He dropped then staggered to his feet and stepped forward like a zombie. The crowd rushed by him like migrants fleeing on the road from Gomorrah. He stepped forward, then his knees buckled and he went down. “Aaaaarrrgghh,” said Cider. What waited was not the void of nothing but a goulash witch with fangs and eyes like rubies and there was no eternal virgin to welcome his arrival or desirable Madonna at her stone fountain. He snapped back into consciousness. Someone stepped on his hand while he was crawling. He stood then fell straight back. He attempted to stand again but the room constructed itself into a black tunnel down which he continuously hurdled. He did not know what had happened to him and his eyes were swollen. He said to himself over and over that the injuries could be repaired if nothing else happened to him just move. Fumbling forward he felt with a faint surge of that fairyworld sensation from childhood astonishment that the sun had rose. He began to fumble up and to crawl as hard as he could toward the exit with all of his fading might dear God to be out of this place forever. His vision tunneled. Maybe the wrath of God after all. There is another world after death called hell. Those who died, as though they did it on purpose. In the corner of one swollen eye he saw into the teetering bathroom. He stood at last. Then fell. Asleep and dreaming before landing on the floor. I dreamt I dreamt. A tower of silence. Poetical. Outside at last. A foggy sunrise. He stumbled once, then fell over. Five feet from the inn. He crept along, bleeding. Grudging along so slowly. He crawled his way to a distant yard. A red toy wagon, adorned with lost things. A porcelain figurine. He clutched it. It was taken from his hands. The old ragman shook his head. “You must forget these and move on now, son.” Cider groaned. He blacked out. He must have been taken by other people because he woke in the hospital. He had two broken fingers. He had a broken rib, loose teeth, two gone. He moved but something in his chest stabbed him like a shard of glass. His head pounded and his heart slammed against the bone and he was dimly amazed at even being alive at all and did not know if it was worth it. He heard voices talking about his skull. He watched as the elderly doctor stitched his scalp. He lay there, still in his clothes. The doctor finished and left. Cider lay there. His head was wrapped in bandages and his head hurt. Deep within his bones he felt out the truth that loss and beauty are the same. He knew that he could not look to the world that was, and derive then the way it ought to be. He knew that he could not know what the future held. He realized that if by some magic or dream he might be able to gaze past the curtain that lies darkly over what is before him then that very sight would make God heave the world from its direction and place it down upon another route. Then where is the dreamer, his dream? Old faces from his past appeared before him to cause him grief. He knew now with a precise emotion not un-saturated with more than a little despair that the past had no force in the world other than the clinging to its departed husk does indeed make one departed husk more.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Jul 2013 08:18:43 +0000
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