David Castleman

I STAMMER IT TO ANGELS

"Even as my fingers crawl 
a close dust sifts on the crisping tablet, 
burdening spent events 
like sands of an evening desert."

ONE

And so the days droned by again, all so similar and all fading into a nauseating monotony. Considering my past and considering those passing days, everything seemed somewhat unreal, as if everything were a part of somebody else's world. Perhaps I'd read about it in some book long ago.

And so again I became depressed, unhappy, disenchanted, more than usually. Books and meals and pictures and music and everything lost its grip upon my interest, and this was not just my experience alone. Everywhere I went I heard folks chattering about an unusual and oppressive restlessness. It was too seldom that I read the papers so I had no real notion if some huge catastrophe had happened, or was happening, and even if something disastrous had happened I saw no way that it could possibly have affected me intimately: I was a solitary, without human affection and without any normal human bonds. I was as singular as a butterfly on the moon, groping in constant flight.

I had sought a reason to leave the city and my depression seemed to afford me a reason. Now I would have something to do to keep my mind from chewing at me, and perhaps this would be something that mattered, something material, something real.

I packed clothing and a bible-like edition of Shakespeare, and a tiny leatherbound book which included both Lear and The Tempest. I'd long had a premonition that his two opposing plays in this minute novelty edition would one day be my only physical communication with powers in worlds beyond, and I welcomed them.

I permitted myself the delightful extravagance of a long hot shower, with much soap. Beginning at the top, I shampooed the fur all of the way down, and stepped out feeling reprieved. My pack was ready, so I ate a hearty breakfast of tuna and wheat, and I left. I walked. I had no specific destination so I aimed north.

Roads everywhere seemed jammed, but it seemed to me that if something actually had slipped in the normal world of the little people, something tossing their government into chaos, that eventually their government would regain control and the roads would unclog. As yet I'd no inkling of a necessity for progress, and I felt that things would ease. I felt that my ramblings probably would not prove unfortunate for me, without a reason, without reason.

It was curious to see dead automobiles flecking the roadways. It was curious to see families trekking like refugees toward some paradise vaguely in a distance. One fellow mentioned that several families had fastened themselves into bomb shelters so that nobody could steal their precious food and precious treasure.

Early I left major walkways and journeyed toward the country, hoping to discover serenity. It was curious, too, to find an occasional corpse reeking from a ditch. Sometimes I questioned my personal safety, and was relieved that I'd brought a sheath-knife, which might prove useful for a variety of purposes.

By seeking constantly the most deserted and the smaller roads, after a time I was nearly alone. Sometimes I saw a traveler snoozing beneath a tree, and there were many birds about. In such backwood places it seemed that many folks lived as they had always lived. Every few days I saw clothing hanging on a line near some farmhouse, and a few times I saw women or girls hanging or unhanging the clothing. These were pleasant sights to my lonely eyes, even though the emotional distance between us was so distinct that these creatures seemed to be places rather than to be people, items rather than personalities, seemed to be items offering no gifts that I might ever claim. Friendliness was replaced by curiosity, which peers unfeelingly, and no tittle of humanity might be shared.

And my belly groaned with hunger, groaned to be stoked. I had packed sardines and peanut butter, and it was gone except in memory. I found meals at a farmhouse occasionally for a bit of chopping or carrying. Sometimes a bit of vegetables disappeared from a garden while I passed the area by evening, and once a sweet blueberry pie disappeared from its cooling-place on a porch, as I strolled the area by daylight.

I seldom took more than the moment required. With a bit of help, the future would provide for itself.

Once I passed a field behind a stream of trees accompanying the road. I saw a scarecrow in the pose of martyrdom, crucified in a cleared field among drooping sunflowers. Crows perched and scuttled everywhere, enveloped everything.

One woman knelt before the tortured rags as children watched from several yards away, scattered among the flowered stalks. She was dressed in black with a veil protecting her face, the black folds of her black dress draping round her like an escutcheon of petals on the dirt. She prayed.

One child saw me and nudged the other children and all of them scampered into the stalks and away. The woman knelt amid her prayers, heedful of nothing except her hallowed duty. I continued on my way.

For days I continued and met nobody. My mind dealt only with itself, and my perceptions ignored everything that was not myself. Everything beyond myself in my mind shuddered and shattered like the illusion that it was, and I looked into myself to find whatever realities were beyond myself. I spun and spun, and walked and walked.

Walking the road in the middle of one afternoon I heard singing. It seemed to be the voice of a man and it seemed to descend from somewhere nearby. I walked to the roadside and gazed through the trees. The singing stopped and I saw nobody, then a voice said, "Who might you be?"

This potentially mighty metaphysical conundrum was placed from somewhere just above where I stood, so I looked up, and I saw a man's form perched midway up the nearest tree, his round and moony face like the Cheshire cat's round moony face. He had swung his round face toward me and I could see that it wavered slightly on his extended neck.

I answered his apparent question with my name, and he replied that his name was, "Amon Rudley, at your service." He asked me where I was going and I said that I didn't know, that I was merely following my feet and my whims.

Lowering his form to the lowest branch, he dropped beside me onto the edge of the road, and announced that he would be my companion, with my approval.

One small fear skittered across the surface of my mind as I remembered those various attitudes of death I had observed as I had passed smelly ditches along my way, where humans achieved the brief and physical transformation into mud, and yet I was lonely. I was lonely, and I noticed that the various companions who emerged from my own psyche when I was alone, had never been much fun to be with, and they never satisfied. So I allowed him the feeble comfort of my companionship, and I accepted the comfort of his companionship, and the burden.

For much time we marched in silence, listening to the sounds of the day, listening to the birds and the barkings. And then without the intrusion of a preamble, he began to tell me the tale of a human life, and he said that it was his.

He said that he had been living in a cabin, far away in some hills. He and his wife had been living there together, sharing life and lives and the normal duties of existence. They had lived there happily for many years. One day they drank some wine they had made, and they swam in a pool that ran nearby their home.

Strangers arrived and beat them both and beat them until consciousness was lost. When he and his wife woke they were alone and her sanity was tottering, and toppled. She died by her own hand, and he lost his interest in maintaining life's precarious balance, and he began to walk aimlessly.

All he wanted from his life was to walk toward nowhere and to sing the old songs they had sung together. The old songs are the best songs, for they bring a sort of melancholy happiness. "And then you came along, my friend."

It was obvious to me that he was a rather odd fellow, and yet I confess that I was glad to be spared the burden of my own companionship. That he be pleasant and harmless was all I asked, especially harmless.

Amon and I walked many miles, at times one of us beginning something of a conversation, and then both of us lapsing again into a comfortable silence. Neither probed, and I didn't avail myself of the old accompanists to my psyche, and my mind was welcomely quiet as we walked along.

Being with somebody else made traveling simpler and, although we made more detours for the sake of curiosity than I had made when I was alone, yet we seemed to walk farther each day. I didn't understand it or notice it, but it was beginning to seem important that we accomplish a greater distance each day. This feeling was still a subtle feeling, and yet it was there like a bird floating above a distant valley.

The road we traveled went as far as vision, and it seemed to be straight and flawlessly level as eyesight seems to be. In a distance toward the east were visible hills, and Amon mentioned the vision of a mountain beyond those hills.

People were appearing more commonly. Often we saw groups of hikers on a branch-trail as we passed a junction. Usually they seemed to be wanderers like ourselves. Once we saw a group of perhaps two hundred people, with farm animals and dogs, and with carts drawn by horses, trekking toward some eerie concept of happiness.

Although traveling was truly more pleasant, the days remained as they had always been, still empty and uneventful. All of my life I had worked for a living, so I was accustomed to a passage of meaningless days and empty hours and the endlessly empty slinging of inane pleasantries, and I found that life on the trail was much the same but with a difference of boundaries. I was gladdened by the absence of telephones and televisions and automobiles and shouting, by the absence of surge, by the absence of soulless little beasties demanding that one accede to their cumulative inconsequence.

After many such days of this widening calm, the hills, once far on the horizon and barely north of the opening sun, seemed to be approaching. After many more days, the road, it was apparent, had relocated and we stood among the hills, setting as our goal the mountain which was now obvious.

We walked many lengths of hill and I was surprised to step the last of these hills, and to see an immense forest sunken in the earth. Squat broad redwoods hunched massively toward the mountain, seeming to envelop the mountain in a ring of redwood. Still the mountain seemed to be at least some hundred miles from where we stood in awe. From ourselves, it seemed that a casual avenue had been scythed awkwardly toward the mountain, which stood magnificent in its distance.

That evening we camped on that final hill and we proceeded toward morning. The path was so irregular and heaped with so many obstacles, that it was many days to touch its end. The mountain had always been apparent and had thus accustomed us to its majesty, but once before the thing itself it was astonishing. It seemed as true as if it were a revelation, precisely.

Standing on the opposite shore of the river which was its moat, and still almost a mile away, we couldn't speak for almost a solid hour. Its face was featureless and a jutting wall, sparsely clothed with brambles and briar. I presumed that the surrounding river began on the yonder side and delivered three shoots which reunited by where we stood, for a waterfall slipped sixty feet from the base of the mountain and hung itself into a pool, then escorted the limbs from the periphery again into the forest.

That night we slept at the base, and in the morning while fishing for breakfast with Amon's gear, we decided to attempt an individual encompassment at the base and to rejoin each other at the distant watertunnel where the water fed into the mountain, if there was indeed such a place. It occurred to me that the waterfall might be fed by streams from the top of the mountain, but I didn't like that notion and chose not to accept it without some better proof.

After a breakfast of some slimy carp-like monsters of bone and grease, which we had to steam vigorously to make edible, Amon and I departed and I used the day afoot, soon frustrating. This was visually tiresome because the face of the mountain was so changeless from place to place, varying only from same to same. No individual characteristic had any significance except in its relationship to the whole, and the novelty of awe being withdrawn, the whole became a bore. It wouldn't permit my excitement, so my feet trudged and my mind looked elsewhere for its stimuli and for its relief.

That evening I camped discontent and grumbling: even the wood itself wouldn't burn as warmly and as cheerfully for me as it would burn for Amon. Disembodied voices yammered at me from the inside of my psyche or from somewhere on the other side of that hole, voices that demanded to be heard and more voices that might be ignored. I listened to the roaring of my blood along its course as it would gather and push and build and swell and be free, and I listened to the subtlest currents of its flowing as they imitated the sound of human voices and the sounds of other voices. I listened to the earthly river I curled beside, and in exhaustion I slept.

In the morning I continued my journey, and in the following morning I continued my journey again, and on and on until I had become so discouraged that I turned about and returned to the waterfall. In all of those days I had no food except for the slimy carp that had to be boiled into mush to be devoured with reluctance.

When I arrived at the waterfall I found Amon waiting, with his customary indecipherable expression on his face. He acted as if he was not surprised to see me, and without much talk we climbed to the lip of the waterfall and sat beside the waterfall, watching into the forest and the river and listening.

Amon decided to climb farther, so I let him, and I remained on the rock by the water, a silent observer of others' lives as I continued to watch idly from a rim over the forest. I saw hawks prowling the skies and watching for the unwary, and occasionally I watched them descend like some dreadful forboding onto their prey.

I watched owls abroad too early for comfort or for the land's comfort, watching for the stupid and the preoccupied who had abandoned the refuge of healthy shadows and stood exposed or scurried too exposed, and I watched the owls plunge and I heard that peculiar rending confrontation which had been elicited from the prey, the unholy screech of horror and of agony. I wondered if the owl made a sound from its own throat as it hit and ripped, and I wondered if it only deigned to smile.

Amon returned, and quietly suggested that I follow him. He led me to his discovery, up the rocks. On the other side of the water, and up, was a slit in the rock.

I followed as he went in, and soon the small entrance opened into an abundant and clean and flat grotto, and here we slept the night. Amon found small wood in some recess of the dark grotto, so we felt no chill, and from somewhere he produced a cache of nuts, so we felt no hunger.

Waking in the morning, we decided to scale the mountain. If there'd not been a slight slope and a weird natural broken stairway along the fault which permitted the waterfall, we wouldn't have been able. As it was, it was a long steep thirsty trek, and I was grateful for the nuts Amon had found, and for moist mosses which garnished the length of the trail. As it was, time seemed long and time seemed very long, and I declined to share with my companion any of a great piece of whining.

Each night we slept in a nook beside a bush. I was afraid that I might begin to sleepwalk, but blessedly I did not, and eventually we were at the top.

The mountain seemed to be some type of crater, maybe an old retired and impotent volcano, perhaps a tad more than forty miles in span from our place at this river-tip and along the course of the river. As I had predicted, a river cleanly bisected the crater until it wasn't quite lost in the distant mist.

On one side of the river was a chaotic upheaval of deciduous flame: healthy trees shouting in purple and yellow and red and in orange. I imagined foxes trotting, darting sleekly. I imagined maple trees heavy with a sweet burden of sap.

On the other side of the river were farms reasonably placed, squares and rectangles of useful human delineation. Near the center of the riverline was a town of a hundred homes, a town of a hundred huts arranged on a small grid of tamped earthen paths. Prominent among the grid were two larger streets, perpendicular and with the largest of the buildings near the center of this cross, and with one end of these streets capped at the river by a pier which nearly formed a bridge to the other side and to its foreign shore. I saw no people on the streets, and I saw no people on the paths.

We relaxed awhile, and we slept awhile through the night.

It took us less than a day to dismount the mountain, since we slid all of the way on silt and soft dirt and fine gravel. The slope was easy and the travel was an easy tumbling bumping kind of travel. Sometimes in the morning we laughed out loud, but by later in the day as it continued we became thoroughly sober and stolid about it, and just did it as if it were just another of the dreary duties of existence.

When we stood on a field, still a mile from the village, we heard drums and voices. I imagined Kong rising from the forest on the other side of the river and beating his misunderstood and betrayed chest with his huge hairy fists.

We approached the village, and found the inhabitants to be performing some unintelligible rite, like dancing, but as soon as they saw us, they stopped abruptly. From nearby like the voice of one of Mozart's birds, the sound of a lone violin appeared as if on the roof of sound, like a summons.

Nobody spoke, so Amon spoke, "Please pardon our intrusion."

One of the eldest of those present spoke, "Wait," and again a complete quiet reigned.

Like hands released from prayer, the crowd parted and a very old man stepped forth. He was dressed as many of the old men were dressed, in trousers not quite yellow, a coarse leather shirt decorated with a few feathers away from its main areas of use and wear, a straw hat, and was barefoot. His voice was an announcement, "Why are you here?"

Amon began again by drawing his breath and being about to say, but I interrupted his attempt and spoke. "We have journeyed far and we discovered the spectacular visionary mountain. We did not realize that you are here. We will stay or go as you desire." I said this though I had not the faintest notion of how we might go, or where we might go, for to climb the mountainwall where we had descended it was obviously impossible. Climbing an avalanche is not a reasonable escape.

Ostensibly this pleased, and he replied soothingly, "You will stay for a time. We will speak in the morning. Let these few words suffice for now."

He turned his back to us and immersed himself into the crowd which parted as it received him and then closed, and he was gone. As if he had never occurred, the crowd resumed those attitudes we had found before they had seen us, and they seemed immediately to forget us absolutely except for the spaces we stood in. They began to hum some long musical passage.

Flutes and drums reappeared to our eyes and to our ears, and other musical instruments for which I have no names but whose sounds can be heard in silence in every developed human psyche. This music insinuated itself through every door and corridor of every human psyche present, and the most developed psyches felt it the most dearly.

Now a circle disentangled itself in the midst, and very young women danced into the circle and stood still, akimbo. They began to sing and to sway and to glide about each other. Their singing began individually and simultaneously, each singing as if she were borne alone on a boat on a stream on soft currents which needn't be controlled. All of these lovely feminine singings accumulated into one delicious almost delirious tumult, and from this pleasant din of tumult wafted another singing voice, so uncloyingly sweet it seemed impossible, similar to the voice of a woman, beginning in the distance, causing the listener to strain to catch it all, drawing the listener in and in and yet further in, reminding the listener that every word heard by the listener belonged only to the listener. I remembered the tale of Ulysses and the hankering Sirens, and I remembered the fatal wrong sweet devils' music of the Sirens.

Slowly the tempo was rising and the miraculous voice was done. Whereas before most of the singing was in soft voices, now the current was turbulent and vigorous and in the circle the girls danced vigorously and flailing toward an explosion of nerves, and beyond the circle the other celebrants danced vigorously also and with nerves charging and with blood charging.

One of these young women in the circle pierced through my half-shuttered eyes at times and times again. It seemed as if she recognized me. Her skin was wintry and almost translucent, and the features of her eyes were dark, dark, dark as the darkest night.

She left the circle and danced among the dancing crowd. Ambiguously she almost smiled but averted her eyes and her mouth before I could be certain, before I could be certain what might be meant if she did smile.

I would watch her and she would tumble into the crowd and I would see her elsewhere as she tumbled back out of the crowd, and then she would tumble back in again. She wore a long pale robe, of a skin as pale and as enchanting as her own.

To my eyes they were an odd group, and I can only guess what was seen when they looked at me. I wore old and softened hiking boots and bleached blue jeans, an old wool shirt of blues and greens shot with a heather-like purple. My pack was on my back and I leaned on a walkingstick of almondwood which I had pruned from a storm-fallen tree in an orchard in the Sacramento Valley almost twenty years earlier. I never bothered to notice what Amon wore, since it never seemed to matter.

As I adjusted to my new situation I began to focus on the various individual things, on the individual performers beyond that one young woman who had seemed almost a revelation of some secular sort. And I began to walk the periphery of the crowd, glad to feel freed from the press of the throng.

Everybody seemed to be a part of the satisfied, jaded group except for one exceptionally slight fellow who sat on a stool on an edge of the crowd. He changed in his behavior almost as if he were some sort of metronome: now he was an observer to everything that transpired, now he was immured far within his internal regions to which nothing else had access and which recognized the existence of nothing else whatever.

This exceptional fellow, as I was to learn, was Broderick, the town poet, and I was to learn that like almost every artistic aspirer in human history the sensible majority of citizens also accorded him the title and the glory of being preeminent among the village idiots. He lugged that stool slung to his back everywhere he went, and sat upon it anywhere he chanced to sit. Even those who thought him an idiot and an incorrigible fool accorded him a certain respect, albeit without any admiration, and admitted that perhaps he possessed a spiritual capacity which was lacked by all more sensible people.

His poems were said to make plausible that which seemed utterly implausible elsewhere, and spoke eloquently if allusively of things relative to spiritual aristocracy. Such poems are like sparks which light slow fires that might finally inspire the consciousness of nations. This was no happy man.

He had been absent or preoccupied when Amon and I had arrived, I assumed, for when he saw me he was visibly startled, then he began a meticulous scrutiny of myself as if I were a strange apparition and the gods had allotted him the power to probe until he was satisfied. He was completely undaunted by my gaze which rested less brashly upon himself, and I felt as if he were a scientist and I was just a new bug under his ken.

Now the tempo began slowly to fade and finally ceased. When all was quiet, people arrived from the chief of the buildings, toting trays of assorted foods: potatoes, fish, chicken and wild turkey, breads with kernels of rich whole wheat embedded in them, and a small meat I did not recognize.

Tables and trays were placed where the girls had danced, with stacks of wooden dishes and one great rough tub of water. Spatulas and wooden spoons were used to scoop food onto the dishes, from which the people fingered. One young boy brought Amon and myself plates furnished and wooden cups filled with a rather tart wine, not an unpleasant wine despite its tartness which was sharp enough to bring a pain to the back of my jaw.

These foods were brought as if by signal, for I had joined Amon but a few minutes after my wandering when the boy appeared. The food was quite palatable, maybe even delicious, although it was considerably plainer to my taste than is customary in most areas.

Everyone hesitated when the courses were over, as if in private benediction, and then everyone converged around the great rough round bowl of water. Concentric line after line shuffled humbly forth and went to knees, and engaged hands and mouths and foreheads in a communal ablution, washing all traces of animal grease from their appearance.

Amon and I waited until almost the end of this ritual, and we accompanied one of the last groups, and washed, hoping we weren't blaspheming or blundering socially. We felt secure in our decorum, since the boy had prodded us and since he accompanied us as we washed. I'd never had a valet before.

When this exercise was over, the boy led us to a small hut which was near the main building. Cots had been arranged, with wonderful thick mattresses and wonderful thick downy blankets. Sleep wandered like a shepherd, but eventually arrived and then remained until the boy's hand tousled my arm as the sun woke. I showered in the hut's fine primitive bathroom, as Amon did, and the boy led us outside to breakfast.

Breakfast consisted of an array of eggs of different sizes and shapes and flavors, all of them nicely poached, bread, potatoes, and more of that odd small meat I could not name. Luscious ripe bright red tomatoes followed, to clean the body in their healthy acidic passage back to the sea of light.

Then we were herded into that chief of their buildings, into what looked like a courtroom, and we were shown an audience which included the village patriarch (whom we had already met) and a small parliament of other elderly folks and a very few much younger folks. Silence was loud to my ears as they stared at us, and I was too frightened to speak.

Most of the people gazed up and down at my clothing, and sometimes at my face and at my beard. None of them had beards, and the women and the men all wore their hair quite shorter than it was worn on the outside. It was as if they distrusted their abilities to penetrate disguises, each person having accepted the boundaries of its personal obtuseness.

Some few of the older people and the younger people gazed almost only at my face and, it seemed, at my posture. Were they wary of threatening attitudes? I wondered, and I wondered much. Had they never met an outsider before? Why?

As dispassionate as buttons of bone, the eyes of the local patriarch watched my returning gaze, and I thought I saw a slight shifting in the shadows of his mind. He inquired our purpose for disturbing the village and for disturbing the rites of the village. This question seemed a formality, for his next question was chambered almost before I could begin to speak.

I had begun to explain ourselves as homeless and as transient, but he cautioned me, and asked if I wished to cause any real and further trouble. "Or are you just an innocent fool?

"Many round generations ago, two brothers lived among us in our village, and they were not able to be content. So with both of their wives they left our village, and they explored. We will assume that they kept somewhere in the forest on the other side where the trees are lit with colors all of the year, or they found a place to live out where the river stops or where the river begins its run into the valley. You must be their blood and therefore you must be our blood, so you are welcome to stay with us.

"Be at peace while you are here, but be wary. Beyond the mountainwall is nothing conducive to life, but only the poisoned end of our human universe.

"Discuss nothing of which I would not approve, and in that calm churning place behind your eyes you know exactly what I mean, and you know exactly why.

"Audience is done."

The boy who had been acting our valet touched my arm and I turned about and followed him from the building. It did not occur to me to wonder why all of the patrician's attention had been leveled at myself, and to wonder why Amon had been treated as if he were only my personal illusion.

Amon and I drifted about the village, with the boy dawdling in pursuit, and returned to the focal area by the chief building just in time for a lunch of barbecued trout. Afterward I contemplated my curious predicament. I had seen horses and men working the fields beyond the houses, and I had seen children playing on the streets. I had seen women washing clothing by the edge of the river, and I had seen women carrying water from the wells into the houses. I had seen no dogs, and I had not heard that constant yapping which denotes civilization commonly. I had not seen a cat. I had witnessed no birds in flight, though I had seen and heard what seemed to be thousands of chickens in pens beside the village streets and beside the paths of the village, and I had seen hundreds of presumably wild turkeys peeking through the undergrowth on the far side of the river.

I wondered if some strange magnetism had selected among potential inhabitants, as it had out in the real world where I had been at every other time of my life. But why should these creatures and only these creatures have been selected for such an experiment, and such a seemingly unobserved experiment?

Some recognition of reality in my mind even twisted briefly and wondered if this were like the distant side of a mirage, like the distant side of a dream, as if only this version of reality were precisely true and as if the human inhabitants of this reality one day would come to me smiling and announce that the farce was over and that a mantling of humane decency had settled over all, bringing freedom and happiness and honor.

But that was foolishness, and reflected the imbecility of optimism, and in my self I knew that it was false. Too often hope just brings a dishonorable reaction, disappointment.

Walking alone among the houses I saw that everybody maintained an untouchable reserve. Smiles addressed me from every face and from not a single heart. I felt the most branded man alive. I walked to the riverside and sat within the grass at the verge, removing my boots and socks, and I slid my feet up to my ankles and my calves in the refreshing fluid, and I leaned back on the grass, and I slept.

I woke when I heard strange oaths and strange mutterings near me, and I found Broderick surveying me vaguely from somewhere past his physical presence. His eyes seemed to curl into focus, and again he was present in his physical form and was just a few strides from where I now sat regarding him.

Bypassing social niceties, he asked that I speak of lands alive beyond the valley, and he unslung his stool and sat upon it. The patrician and his admonitions were completely outside my mind, and I spoke to Broderick as if I were ordering things within my own mind, and without a single compunction.

I explained about the society which has existed under so many times and guises throughout the various ages of our planet, and how it has been always the same and run by the same folks regardless of circumstances. I spoke of art, war, and of poverty, and of their myriad aspects, and I spoke what I was able.

As I spoke, we sat with faces averted, eyes toward the musing water. When I had done, we were silent, and then Broderick sang restrainedly, as if he were attempting the very first singing of the very first song.

His words were easy and gentle and seemed to be coming from the farthest reaches of myself, and I was certain that I had heard them in dreams or in the bubbling backwaters of my own mind. Perhaps he was only expressing the wisdom of living blood, or perhaps he was only expressing the delicate might of the land and those tender insights of the land that watches its own death and chooses to do nothing to control that death. I felt as if every human thought and every one of our human feelings (was there a difference?) were being played through his little song, and as if the thoughts and the feelings of the other passing animals were being played through his words also. It was a brave sad song and brief.

Night had laid its touch upon the valley by the time the song was done, so we left, agreeing to return on the following early afternoon, which we did.

Broderick was waiting on his customary stool as I arrived, and I sat beside him softly on the grass, not wishing to pull him too abruptly from his dreams and reveries. After awhile, he noticed me and he began without preamble to tell me about the timeless village we sat beside. He was an able historian, and a good talker.

He said that the people believed that they had lived there forever and that they would remain there forever, as their very unequal generations passed. He said that among them all, the village patrician was the eldest and had existed among the villagers all of the way back into fable, and that the patrician had known and had governed the grandparents and the grandparents' grandparents, all of the way back to the earliest urge of history and beyond into ages immeasurable.

Some of the other people were ancient also, but not nearly as old as the patrician, who was known as Father Tyndale. Usually, however, he was simply referred to as he, or him. It was enough.

Broderick could not positively account for this longevity, but said that it was commonly believed that at least a piece of that enormous longevity was caused by the eating of a special meat which was denied almost all of the other villagers. I had noticed the small meat which accompanied most of the meals I had shared in the village atmosphere, and I interrupted Broderick to ask if this meat were the cause of the longevity.

Broderick told me that I was close to the mark, though I had not quite hit the mark. Everybody who lived in the village, Broderick said, was constrained to raise rats in cages in their homes for the food of the community. And the flesh of the rats was a common provender, as I had seen and tasted and as everybody else saw and tasted almost every evening.

But as a token of respect and of subservience, and actually as a holy offering to the representative of the gods, everybody gave the rats' testicles and the rats' brains to the patrician, who ate them slightly steamed every morning and every night. To this was attributed his vast longevity.

Broderick paused, and commented that it was commonly suspected that those other people who lived a great many years were sneaking this precious delicacy in their homes. He said that he had never tried such fruits of the harvest, for he did not wish to be denied the great relief that surely awaited those who forbore to eat that weird fruit. I understood.

In the local school, which all children were compelled to attend, was a copy of the Bible and of Shakespeare, and a few slim volumes by other members of the village life. Those first books were allegedly stored in tightly woven baskets, tightly locked away so that careless fingers might not harm them. But generations of village children had fastidiously transcribed their contents onto the local version of papyrus (which was what the other books had been printed on, including Broderick's book of poems, TALES I HAVE BEEN HANGED BY). Fleetingly I wondered just how far this passage of generations had altered the transcribed texts from the original, and if method had conspired with human error.

The children were instructed that Father Tyndale had written both of the old books long ago in the unanswered past. Broderick had often wondered if somewhere there was a place where birds could fly with an ease approached only by the insects hereabouts, and he wondered about the sea. What was its mighty function? It seemed to him like some huge pregnant basis of which all animal blood was but an echo.

The schoolteachers were careful to explain that all unfamiliar references were to be attributed to Father Tyndale's youthful imagination. Such conceptual references were only words, and the nonsense dragged back upon the land when youthful yearnings were flung like nets into the yielding fabric of dreams. And, of course, we were living in the real and modern times, and nobody could say what was yesterday when the world was only impending.

Abruptly Broderick ceased his recitation of the past and of the present, and I looked at him. He chose not to remember that we were together, and I chose not to remind him. Something ate at his understanding of his perceptions, and the doubt expressed in his face worried me, but I did not challenge it because I felt that the normal social keys wouldn't work with him. I did not know how to unlock his reserve and how to comfort the afflicted man who dwelt behind that reserve. My suspicion was that something had clicked, some delayed mechanism had been prompted into action, and that for the first time in his existence he had begun to perceive and to feel and to think for himself, and that he had just realized that everything he had ever been told by the various authority figures of his life had been a lie deliberately laid. Who might offer a real comfort at such a time?

So he left, and I remained sitting a bit more. I removed my clothing and walked into the river's water and stood. I was uncomfortable in my self. I dawdled, and I napped with our old familiar sun wearing at my face and beading my forehead and drawing a fine thread of spittle from my mouth to form a lacework in the dust.

TWO

My weary noggin had scarcely touched the pillow, when the boy who had been acting as our valet touched my arm and asked me to follow him. He would not allow me to wash or eat, and I followed him as dumbly as if I had been a steer awaiting slaughter.

I was led into the same courtroom I had been in once before, in the chief of their buildings, where the patrician presided to a group larger than that last group had been. The atmosphere was dour. The patrician announced that I had betrayed their trust, that I had betrayed my responsibility, and that I had betrayed him personally. He regarded me for a time, and again I felt as if I were being filtered through his consciousness, and again he spoke. "The consequences must be satisfied."

I was led outside where the entire village was waiting. Each person hefted and tossed one small stone, and they converged on me and bound me and led me away.

When I woke it was a new dawning. I was bound crucified in a field among drooping sunflowers. My mind was a mess, as if the fluid was filled with mud. My memory felt as if it had been ruined, as if it had been torn. When I tried to look at my face, my nose looked whole, but my mustache and my beard were gone. Rubbing my jaw against my shoulder, I could feel that my beard had been crudely hacked off.

I hung, and I slept.

When evening appeared the innominate boy who had been our valet arrived and jostled me with his hand. His hand beneath my shirt withdrew my knife, and he freed me. He gave me water. He gave me my pack and my staff. He rubbed my feet and my hands to restore the blood. He led me to the river. He scurried off across the fields.

I stripped and put my clothes in my pack, and I entered the water. It supported me through the valley and through the walls of the mountain, and sent me over the waterfall and into the pool sixty feet below. I swam, and crawled on the grass, and I slept as a dry breeze tapped.

I was wakened by a wetness in the night. Rain tumbled. I could see no stars, but the moon rummaged through the clouds and placed a light on Amon's cavern. I grabbed my pack, which was wet and leaking its clothing onto the surrounding wet ground, and I ran as well as I could toward the beam upon the rocks. In the wet and the dark I found the cliff impassible so I huddled against it and fretted a cold and cruel night.

Dawn came, enabling me to navigate, and soon I shivered in the nippy grotto, exhausted from shivering all of the night. When I woke my forehead raged and Amon stood beside me, his eyes on my opening eyes.

"The old man regrets. The festive town is appeased. All is as it should be." He spoke in his usual unusual manner and then stopped. Evidently he mistook my silence for a cue, for he resumed. "Your flight was apprehended by a woman in the night. The tow was livid. Broderick was delivered in your stead. The town is appeased."

I was appalled to hear this. I told Amon that we must return immediately and rescue Broderick. Amon agreed that me must return but said that it was unnecessary to rescue Broderick. Amon said that Broderick has been rescued already, and had been found that morning with the strange hilt of a strange knife protruding from his belly. I felt for my knife, and its sheath was as empty as a widow.

Amon said that we must return, and asked me to dress so that we might leave. Three times he asked me to go with him.

The first time I said no, and a gesture of confusion brushed his eyes.

The second time I ignored him.

The third time I simply shrugged in denial, neither caring nor inquiring why it seemed so important to him. Later I might have wondered passingly if he had been offered a bounty, or had been put on parole. What bounty might be sufficient to coerce a fellow to return to a land where dreams were kept in a cage, and where any clean light were penalized? If the mind is never free, then the body is in a cage pursued by the dragons of madness and slow shuffling feet and whimpering.

He acted as if he were only the illusion of an illusion, and he left me. I sat against a wall and shivered, welcomely becoming myself again. I could not distinguish the days from the nights, as I sat and shivered, and many may have passed, or few. Outside the interminable rain continued its battering like some adolescent army besieging an intransigent town and clawing at the walls while its latest technological approximations of hell's bountiful horrors lobbed over the battlements.

My head seethed, and my brain was rinsed with pain. I convulsed and sweated. When consciousness came, I drank from pools by the entrance. I didn't notice hunger, but even my delirium was thirsty and my sleep was thirsty.

Sometimes I sat at the entrance, staring blankly toward the mist which again swam as a film beneath all things, enshrouding the world in a still ethereal cloud. I could not know if it actually were, or if it were merely the film of my eyes. Occasionally a lightning thrust would rouse my vestigial self, and then I'd retreat into the haze of myself, my consciousness drowned by parades of chaotic images.

Once for a time I sat and no lightning came. The wild moon stuck branches of echoed light through the clouds. I saw an enormous tree, stranded on a field. Closer, an enormous bird flew, scraggled by the winds and the rains. It flew toward the tree and all was dark.

Lightning came, and I saw the bird upon the tree, plucking vermin from its flesh. Again it was dark.

Lightning came, seeming to swallow the whole living sky, and I was blinded and desolate. My sight cleansed, like smoke washed away by the winds, and again the moon was displayed behind the clouds. Nothing remained on the branches of a shattered tree, shattered.

After this I was again submerged in a sweaty delirium, and I fell back, and I fell asleep. When I woke it was a perfect day for walking so I left.

THREE

Deeming continuation of the journey a necessity, I did not return on the awkward avenue, that corkscrew avenue that Amon and I had used to approach the commanding mountain from the range of many hills, but I struck boldly among the involving forest. Soon an abundance of disrupting vines and tumbled trees appeared, impeding forward progress but causing little concern or frustration. Again all feeling of a need for conserving time had faded, and I traipsed lackadaisically, often halting to ponder beside a stream or to pluck a huckleberry or another dish which would arrive.

There were many such arrivals, and I ate no flesh and yearned for none. I had never felt so free. I had not been broken, and yet I was free.

I found a path, expanded perhaps by deer, and walked with it until I stepped into a valley. After days of shadow I was glad to play under the sun, and to see birds and squirrels, and butterflies and rabbits and several deer and one wary fleet fox. I thought I saw a human face once and I called to it, but it must have been an illusion, for it did not answer and I could not find it when I ran to it.

I went to an edge of the valley, which by then seemed to be more correctly called a meadow, since the slope was so slight, and I sat on the fine stems of grass just to relax. I was free and I was conscious of being free, and glad.

A cluster of careless youngsters came gamboling and chortling through the meadow from the path I had used, and, singing and playing, danced and skipped to and through a corner of the meadow which was not too distant. I noted the spot and I noticed that they had not seemed to notice me sitting there. My clothing was in dirty earthtones so I was not surprised.

Soon another bunch of happy young humans appeared and disappeared, as the first bunch had appeared and disappeared. I hesitated, to ascertain that nobody might surprise me from behind (realizing the futility of the gesture), and, after what seemed a safe lapse, I nonchalantly accompanied the group of healthy youngsters.

Many times I felt certain that the people would round a curve to discover their destination, but they continued to use the path. When it was dark and I was unable to pursue their voices farther, I curled beside a bush beside the trail and I slept, yet hearing the voices as they seemed to flow about me like voices in a dream that had escaped the bony and juicy confines of my head, and as they seemed to be chanting in the trees as if the stars whispered gaily, curiously high. They reminded me of the old stories we have all heard about leprechauns, and I gave this memory a forced and hearty laugh, albeit a silent laugh, and a brief laugh. Only a very foolish fellow would laugh at the devil.

With morning materialized the first group, coming up the trail from behind me, dancing about me, and proceeding. Soon came the children of the second group, coming up the trail from behind me, dancing about me, and proceeding. Although a girl crushed my face with her dress, and a boy brushed my face with his hand, none of these people seemed to be aware that I was there. Perhaps their very lightness kept them from awareness of things heavier and richly dark, and burdened.

I settled myself on my feet and I followed them, and the futile antics of the day aped the futile antics of the previous day. And the next morning was the same, and the day.

On the fourth day I noticed a broadening of the trail, which eventually was broad enough to accommodate a small cart. Soon I encountered a bend in the trail and a man driving a small horse-powered cart, laden with cut logs and coming from the same direction that I had come. I had not seen an alternative entrance to the trail, any offshoot of any kind, any branch at all, and I knew that he couldn't have used the trail for very far because there hadn't been any indication of a displacement of shrubbery.

As I spied this man, this very very old man, he gazed fully into me as if I were a house he had lived in and whose crannies he knew each of. I ran to his cart and clambered aboard and he smiled into me in the calmest manner I have experienced. Then I realized that this was Father Tyndale, in one of his avatars, and he told me to be free of questions, and that everything would be understood soon enough.

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