Wings and Feathers

He never understood how Doc could sit so quietly for so long, but he really didn't give it much thought. Doc was Doc. He crossed the square and along the way begged a dollar or two from the tourists just to keep in shape. The Sidings were full of them, lost and looking for famous landmarks and wondering where to eat lunch. He turned around and began to walk backwards across the square keeping a eye on Doc who was sitting so still that pigeons were starting to roost on his shoulders. He stopped, adjusted his hat and started to run. The pigeons that were strolling around the square were startled and began to run themselves, all of them, straight at Doc. There was flurry of wings and feathers when they finally took to the sky leaving Doc alone on the edge of the fountain.
"Cut it out."
"C'mon, Doc. Let's do something."
"You go ahead."
He took in Reed Avenue without seeing anything but when he got to Rivington he stopped dead in his tracks. She was sitting on an upended crate talking to Mauser and laughing her head off at one of his stupid jokes.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" He shouted at her from across the street.
She looked around and when she saw him she got up and took off up the middle of the street. He ran after her and caught her outside the Horse Opera House.
"Let go of me, you asshole."
"What are you doing down here? I don't want you here. I don't want you talking to Mauser, either. He's a fucking pervert and a creep."
"I don't have to listen to you. I can do what I want." She pulled her arm away and stood looking at him, defying him.
"Look, just go home. I'll be there soon, o.k.?"

Mauser saw him coming and ducked behind his vegetable stand, trying to hide from the barrage of potatoes coming over the canopy. One glanced off of his left temple and he staggered and went down.
"Leave my sister alone, you fucking pervert. If I see you talking to her again I'll bash your brains out with a fucking turnip." He left Mauser rubbing his head and went to collect Doc.
"Fucking kids." he said to himself.

The Shepherd

I sat on the top step and watched as he finally let his shoulders grow slack and exhausted, he set down his tools staying like that for so long I thought he might have fallen asleep. I left him there, quietly going to the kitchen to make his tea.
I don't understand his passion, for I have never felt passionate about anything in this life. He is a good man, that I know, but closed and withdrawn, especially when he is working on a piece. I don't understand it but I accept it and I accept his need to unburden himself of the torment these images give him. I accept that it drives him to a remote place. I accept the crying in the middle of the night, and his feverish dreams which pull from him the most terrifying screams and I accept that he has no choice but to endure.
I put the steaming pot in the centre of the table as he comes in to sit in his chair and watch as he mechanically eats a piece of bread and stirs sugar into his cup. His hands are blackened and burnt and he will be sore for days. He doesn't, or can't, look at me or even acknowledge that I am here, lost in reworking and evaluating what he has done.
He will berate himself for the flaws he cannot remove, that no one else can see, and he will pray, asking for forgiveness from his God for the inexactitude of the rendering. This will seem to consume him and he wishes it would, but I know that in the back of his mind he is already forming an idea for the next one. He will create it unhindered by his hands and his eyes, somewhere in a remote corner of his mind. It will coalesce like oil on water, until fully formed it will cry to be released and he will acquiesce, simply a tool for its creation.
And he will return to the workshop, this one delivered, the next ready to be birthed, over and over again, until his hands are ruined and his mind grows quiet, and still I won't understand but I will sit on the top step and watch, reading his mood in the angle of his body, waiting until I see a sign that will tell me its time to go to the kitchen and put on the kettle.

Rats

"Crap. We're right in the middle of the street."
"What? That's impossible. We should be in an alley. What do you see?"
"People. Lots of people. This isn't good. Can you even read a map?"
"I wouldn't call this a map. Its drawn on a paper placemat. I thought you'd done this before."
"I have. There's nothing wrong with the map. Its who's reading the map I have a problem with."
"Yeah? Come down here and say that."
"Oh, shut up. We have a bigger problem. If we can't find it Carl's gonna shoot the both of us. How much time do we have?"
"Uh, about fifteen minutes."
"Shit. Alright, down you go. We have to back track. If we can't find that alley in the next fifteen minutes we might just have to stay down here for the rest of our lives."
"That wouldn't be so bad. I kind of like it down here."
"I know you're joking so I won't punch you in the mouth but if you don't get moving you won't have a mouth for me to punch."
"Hey! You asshole. That was my hand."
"Move dammit! Why are you still standing there with your head in my ass?"
"I'm moving, I'm moving. Jeez."
"Alright. I thought we were here, but it looks like we're here. That's where the coffee shop is."
"We're at the coffee shop? That's only two blocks from where we started and we've been down here for two hours. "
"Hey! You were reading the map! Don't look at me. If you could tell your left from right we'd be there already."
"I can read a fucking map! Look at this. We shouldn't be anywhere near the coffeeshop. There must be more turns down here than you drew on the map. What? What is this written with? Pencil? You used a pencil? It's smudging all over the place."
"Don't rub it. Of, course I used a pencil. You can't erase pen."
"Oh my god. You really are stupid, y'know. You can erase pencil and that's my point. Look. Half the map's all fuzzy now. Oh man, we are in so much trouble."
"Here give me that. This way. We go this way. C'mon, we haven't got that much time. Are you coming?"

Kerioth

Kerioth is not among us. A few of us have postulated that he was the will incarnate. I don't know. I remember his box, trusting him with our resources, but his eyes never left the fire. What did he look like? Few remember him or his appearance but we hear the name whispered in the shadows and there is recrimination on that tongue. And there is guilt. Ours or his? Was there doubt? I remember the will and I remember the temper and the tone. Kerioth had no doubt. The fire that warms us is lit by a hand we know not, and illuminates nothing except the confusion and the darkness we are engulfed in, but Kerioth is not among us and we wonder why. He is not punished. I remember a road, dry and cracked, and an argument and fear. There is recrimination on that tongue but Kerioth has no doubt. The flames reach up into the night, bound and forsaken as are we. The faces, covered in ash and dust, are sunken, eyes darting here and there when we hear his name. I don't remember his face or his appearance but I know that Kerioth is not among us.

Regret

Rupilee killed the bear when he was fourteen. My father was proud, as any father would be, and when the neighbors came to look at it, he came out of the house pushing Rupilee in front of him. They were both surprised when our neighbors made it clear that they found it abhorrent that Rupilee had killed this magnificent animal and I will admit to feeling the same way. That was the first time I felt welling inside me a feeling of pure melancholy, a deep sadness for everything gone wrong in my world, for the day Rupilee and my father dragged the carcass out of the northern forest.

Shifting and still settling, our world was young and we were always finding things we had never seen before. Sometimes from the hills I could make out the massive forms of airborne things far out over the ice, circling, looking for food, although there's little for beasts this big, I thought. Trees grew to their full height, then, and the deep forests where the men never went were very dangerous and wild. There were things there that had never seen us before; even if in those days we were fierce, and frightening, we were alone. We knew so little about why we had been left here, or why this world should seem so inhospitable, but it was our home and all things lived together on this earth, sharing in it's misfortunes and it's glories.

There were some who believed that this place was a gift to us and that what we found we could take. I suppose my father was one of those and Rupilee, too. I couldn't tell you why but that was the first time I sensed a difference in the way I saw the world. There were secrets here, hidden and that belief was enough to separate me from them.

Rupilee cried himself to sleep that night. I could hear him in the bed next to mine, whimpering into his coverings, lost and frightened by these things he couldn't understand. My father roared at my mother and she cautioned him, that in his anger he should not do anything rash.

When I woke, there was too much activity outside and I dressed as fast as I could and went outside. My father was in his nightclothes and he was ordering the other men to harness the horses. My mother stood near the door with a blanket wrapped around her and she stared into the eaves of the forest. "He's gone.", was all she would say when I asked her where Rupilee was.

They were gone for four days, into the forest, and the day-to-days weren't getting done. No one talked to us and some of them made a point of ignoring me altogether. Without anyone to tell me what to do I was bored and spent my afternoons in the hills watching the ice for anything out of the ordinary. When at last I could hear the horses coming I ran to the house and waited. My father stood on the platform strapped to the first horse and he stared at me without saying a word as it came to rest in front of the house. It wasn't until I heard my mother cry out that I realized the others were lifting something down from the last horse. Wrapped in layers of coarse cloth, Rupilee looked sick and I wondered if he had caught a fever in the forest. It wasn't until they covered his face that I realized he was dead. He was the first, and the last of us, who ever died.

Later, years later, when the whole world died, I used to sit and think about Rupilee and all the wonders he never got to see. And I cried, with a sadness wrought from the regret I felt at being angry with Rupilee and from the regret of not consoling him in his anguish and from the regret at feeling nothing, then, except sadness for a doomed bear. Everything dies. I know that now. Everything dies except for me and my regret.

A Matter of Fact

The day ran away with him, and he dragged his heels, as always. He went to see Donald at the pharmacy, leaning on the counter until Donald kicked him out for scaring off customers with his foul mouth and his wheedling voice. He walked down to the park but when he found it empty he went up 3rd to see if Doc was at his post. Doc was there, sitting on the steps drinking a coffee and watching the afternoon traffic with listless concern. He sat down beside Doc and watched for awhile, too.
"You wanna go to a show, Doc?"
"Nope."
"O.K. I'm gonna go then."

As he crossed Main he checked the bins along the alley and found a hat someone had thrown out. There was nothing wrong with it except for a small grease stain on the band. He put it on his head. It was a pretty good fit and it was free so he decided to keep it. He watched himself as a reflection in the window of the Sears outlet and thought he looked good in a hat. He slowed down his stride and leaned back a little, put his hands into his pockets and let the hat do the walking. He chose to ignore the curious looks from the people he passed.

When he turned the corner at Watson's he saw the bikes, jammed into the stand all in a row and got an idea. With a glance over his shoulder he walked along pulling back on the seats until one, about half way down, came loose and he swung it around and hopped onto the seat. He pedalled furiously for about two blocks to make sure no one had seen him and then he settled back and began to enjoy the ride. It was a girl's bike but it was better than the feet. He rode back up 3rd and waved at Doc as passed, but Doc didn't wave back. He didn't care; he was free and easy now. The best thing about riding a bike, apart from not having to walk everywhere was finding a good hill and riding down it at full speed. It was a matter of fact. He took the bike up Rivington, but had to stop halfway and walk it up the rest.

From the top of Rivington you could see most of the Eastern Sidings and out over the lake. The markets that crowded the lower end were full of people shopping for dinner and talking in the street. The criss-crossing wires of the telephone and the electricity, made the Sidings look like a paint-by-number he did once at the home. He smoked a cigarette, leaning on the bike, his hat set back so the smoke didn't get his eyes. This was going to be dangerous. The traffic was light but some old bat could pop out of nowhere and smash him up pretty good. He looked up at the sky, as if he was consulting the heavens for a sign, then got on the bike, jammed his new hat down hard on his head and pointed the bike downhill. Yeah, this was going to be dangerous.

Sleeping Horses

Rupilee told me once that inside every cucumber was a thousand more, identical to the first. I didn't believe him, of course, but when I asked my grandfather about it, the old man said it was true. I spent the rest of the afternoon smashing cucumbers and found out it wasn't true at all. We lived for a while with my grandfather, in the farm belt on the equator, not far from the irrigation canal. I'd never seen so much open water before and it was along time before I saw any again. My father never got to see it because one person from every family had to stay behind to watch the glaciers and keep the houses from sliding into the cracks in the ice. I wanted to stay with my father, but it was mostly because I didn't like doing field work. We worked the fields until dark everyday and had to sleep with the horses. Rupilee and I got separated after the first week and I spent the rest of the season sleeping with the sheep. I didn't know that horses slept standing up.

Those days were golden but we knew they couldn't last because the ice was moving again. My mother told me to soak up as much sun as I could and Rupilee laughed so hard when I asked him what to use that he threw up and my mother put him to bed for the rest of the day.

Everybody had to help load the sleds. They were big, really big. Probably a mile wide, and we packed them forty feet high. They left for the caves,each as it was filled; the horses straining against the chains. All that food was supposed to feed us through the next cold snap, although it didn't look like enough to me. I heard my father say that this one would be a lot longer than the last one, maybe twice as long. When the last of the sleds were gone and the fields were empty we headed for home. I felt bad, though, because there weren't going to be enough cucumbers to last until it got warm again, and my father really liked cucumbers.

Soliloquy

When they came down out of the mountains, the first thing they did was build a lodge. It took them three weeks to finish it and when is was finished they began to plow. A thousand years later the city fell to disease. Crowded and dirty, they lived like rats, on top of each other, the streets awash with filth and it was inevitable. Another thousand years passed before it was dust again and lost, no histories to remember that they'd ever been there at all. In a way, though, they infected the soil, not with their disease but with their desires and on the shore, where the river bends to the south I felt a resonance in the rocks, a reverberation in the ground that they walked on and the valley could recall their descent and, equally, their ascent. I never intended that. It was an experiment, nothing more, but I won't try again. I like it quiet, like this. I like the solitude and I like to be alone with my thoughts.

In a Dream

In those days the earth was a lot smaller. I tried to walk all the way home, once, by going in the opposite direction, but when I didn't make it home for dinner my dad tracked me down and I got a beating right there in front of Mr. Strubbe and his cock-eyed kid. We knew everybody on the planet, in those days, which made it really difficult to hide things from my dad. You had to hide things from him, though, because he was such a crab back then. When he caught me and my brother, Rupilee, pissing on one of the glaciers he nearly had a fit. I couldn't sit down for two days. The world was a dangerous place, I suppose, but I grew up dodging hail stones as big as my head and could jump over a fifteen foot crevice in the ice. And then it got cold. Really cold. I didn't really get time, back then, but I swear it must have been cold for about a million years. I just kept my mouth shut, though, because my mother would invariably tell me to put on a sweater if I complained about it.

My favorite place to go when the world was bugging me, which it seemed to do just about every day, was the Naarq Keil, which was a huge basin carved out by a meteor along time ago. Now it looks like a dump, which it is, but when I was a kid it looked like a porcelain soup bowl with broccoli floating in it. I would sit on the edge and dangle my feet and imagine that I was a giant just home for lunch from the factory. Now that I think of it, though, I don't really like broccoli, so I probably would have just spit it out. If I had some time I'd find an old piece of scrap and slide all the way to the bottom. It took forever to get back up but it was worth it. The hill was so steep I probably got up to about a hundred miles an hour on the way down.

Since Rupilee died I don't get to go to the Keil too much. I have to help my dad with the day-to-days, and besides, he never lets me out of his sight. Sometimes I dream about lying under the trees, looking up at the veins in the sky and I wake up crying and I don't know why.

Apostle

I can feel the texture of his cloak on my fingertips. I can smell his sweat mixed with oil. I can feel him looking at me from across the fire but when I look up he’s not there. All of us feel it. None of us can remember who he is, or was, but then we don’t know who we are either. The fire burns but never goes out as we try to remember what it is we’ve lost along the way. For a while, we had long talks, trying to fit together the clues, for each of us has a fragment of a memory that we can’t fathom but we haven’t talked for a very long time. Each of us is alone in our exile and we wait. We wait for someone to tell us who we are, we wait for an end to this confusion, we wait for the return of the humanity that has been stripped away from us, we wait to face our accuser, we wait to earn his trust, we wait for an end and a beginning, we wait for all eternity, bound by our failure to never know how we failed, or who, but I can feel the texture of his cloak on my fingertips and I can feel him looking at me from across the fire.