Charles Freeland

PELL-MELL BETWEEN GREAT EVENTS

The bus sits in a gulley. Because the parking lot was full, I suppose. Or because the gulley is protected on both sides from the wind. Still, there are the floods to watch out for. And the mites that get in under the door and torment your scalp for weeks at a time. Even the medication isn’t up to its usual good works. Deciding instead to abandon the battlefield to its enemy and beat a retreat to the sound of fife and cymbals. Squid stops by with a handful of magazines. Heady, intellectual fare of the sort he knows Eulalie objects to. Her first reaction is, as always, something muted. A bending of the corner of her lips. Either up or down, he can’t be sure. It is a movement so subtle as to warrant closer examination if you were to record it. But caught in the speed of contemporary events, in the actuality of the here and now, there is no way to determine which movement came first. Which direction the birds take when they are startled out of their slumber on the high tension wires. She follows his eyes to the window where she sees men bent double over the fields across the street. Extracting various forms of plant or mineral materials from the soil. And she wonders if he is trying to re-direct her attention intentionally again. Trying to force her to forget what she had originally wished to say to him. Something about the obscenity of the hour. The inappropriate way he behaves when in the company of other adults. But she can’t remember precisely what it was now because her memory is like one of those steam engines that used to pull freight cars over the mountains in black and white films. It functions slowly at first. And only later finds its momentum.

LAID ON THE TONGUE, AN IRRITANT

She digs the number out of her purse and repeats it to him five or six times without his ever exhibiting the first sign of comprehension. And isn’t it always this way? she thinks as he pulls her to him. And wraps his arms around her head, mock-aggressively. As if to suggest that he might some day, if he were feeling like it, pull her head from her neck as easily as one separates the wrapper from a piece of candy. First, the arrival. And then the administration of certain pleasantries designed as much to fill up space as to communicate anything noteworthy or valuable in themselves. And if he is in a hurry, there will inevitably be some sort of monologue. A treatise on the spirit without his ever using the word spirit. Or seeming ultimately to know what he would denote by the term if he were to use it. But she understands anyway. The way you can understand what is happening in the steel towns two counties over without ever having to go there personally. Or pick up a newspaper. Sometimes these things just have a habit of getting on the wind. And dispersing themselves about in the atmosphere. So that those who live in Mindanao find themselves uttering phrases current as well in the city of Portland , Maine . With the only difference being one of translation, of course. And perhaps a hint of menace or barbarity found in the one but not so much the other. Due, I suppose, to geography. Or the promise of a Sunday thaw.

TOO MUCH FAITH IN THE CAPTAIN’S PLAN

The galleys block the exit to the bay. They smell like dogs after there has been a race from one end of the continent to another. Though the dogs themselves do not take part. They bound around at the periphery. Hoping to get noticed by whoever lingers there. Whoever has stacked the rocks on top of one another and refers to that structure as a monument. I doubt there is any material here for reflection. Any leftovers of the wedding cake. After all, the whole world has learned to do without romance. And the sore knuckles that accompany it. Eulalie recalls the rear-guard action they took, the seemingly endless banter that turned out to be just so much grasping at tuning forks. And scratching outlines into the soft flesh behind the knee. It’s possible other people think in terms that have no correlation with the outside world. That reduce it to some sort of plaything. Like the rubber pomegranate in a baboon’s cage. But when pressed to explain why they need this secret code, this longing for hiding places with faux-Etruscan pottery and ergonomic furniture, the most they can muster is a croak of some sort. A bleating like that you’d expect of mountain ibex. When they are far from their mountains. Perhaps this means we will see the likes of them again some day. In the garden section. Running their thumbs over the hoses. Perhaps we will forget the whole thing ever happened. And lower ourselves discreetly behind the blind before the waterfowl approach and the insults ring out. Or maybe Eulalie is correct in claiming the bottom of the feet are no place to start experimenting. You have to begin at the top of the head. And work your way down. If you wish to avoid the plight of the young wife who sees her husband adorned with the leaves of the Gamb’u tree. A sure sign that he has been visiting the garden of the Vidyadharas. Hoping to secure there his basest desires. But then, who hasn’t taken a detour now and then? Searched for some replica of the month before? But found instead a tingling in the earlobes? A pain in the coccyx that can only be described as tolerable? Better to let the bouillabaisse simmer. Better to address your concerns to the man on the balcony who is playing his oboe with a reckless, primitive abandon. Just as if he were trying to conjure himself from the surf.

LIKE TYCHO DE BRAHE ON HIS SORCERER’S ISLAND

Something needs to be said regarding the pipeline, the avenue through which the despair is arriving. You may believe such things just appear out of nowhere, like snowflakes. But I happen to know through long experience that the emotions too are transported from one place to another. They start in the high steppes and arrive with very little fanfare in most instances. Just a boy and a girl standing on the sidewalk and waving their miniature American flags. Don’t let this fool you. The centipedes, for their part, understand and so crawl under the awning during the hottest part of the day. That doesn’t mean they’ve forgotten the insults aimed at them. It’s just that we haven’t time for any of that if we wish to make it to the awards banquet on time. There are those who will say we never deserved any recognition whatsoever. We just went about our business like Tycho de Brahe on his sorcerer’s island, our minds on the heavens and our bodies on the decline, until notoriety and fortune caught up with us because we couldn’t outrun them. We couldn’t even climb the stairs.