Never again will I complain of the crammed seat in the back of a mini-van,
or the cold floor in a sleazy hotel.
For this truly is luxury,
My feet reclining against the John
my head bathed in the day's waning light.
I stretch upward and yawn contentedly,
a lion surveying his kingdom.
looking on as poor wretches recline in squat blue seats
bending and twisting in fantastical forms the thought of which would make there 50 year old selves need to call their chiropractor.
I listen to the card games,
to the hard pointed little comments meant to draw blood,
the menacing silence
the grind of teeth as hours slowly meld together.
Yes oh Lord it is good for us to be here,
but let us not make three tents.
A sanctuary for one is all I require.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
The Long Day Closes
Tonight I will not dream.
My pillow is hard, unyielding.
a lumpy mass that can not smother echoes that laugh at my nightly struggle.
I turn over... again,
But the change of scenery is no help.
Maybe I should go for a walk?
Go out and greet the night on its own terms?
But I am already cold, empty and nothing out there can fill the void.
Red numbers loom large before me.
One... two.. three
burning through eyelids.
A consuming river of fire which flows onward
leaving me behind smoldering in its wake.
My pillow is hard, unyielding.
a lumpy mass that can not smother echoes that laugh at my nightly struggle.
I turn over... again,
But the change of scenery is no help.
Maybe I should go for a walk?
Go out and greet the night on its own terms?
But I am already cold, empty and nothing out there can fill the void.
Red numbers loom large before me.
One... two.. three
burning through eyelids.
A consuming river of fire which flows onward
leaving me behind smoldering in its wake.
Eyes
Eyes
I have two smallish hazel eyes.
They are not extraordinary in every way except...
They cannot lie.
HOW I DESPISE THEM!
They leak, when I need them waterproof,
Glare when I need them gentle,
Roll into their skull when I need them alert.
They breathe fire.
Smoldering for hours as I lay in bed,
Thwarting my every effort to make them behave.
They give me away at every opportunity.
Forcing my head down to pray to the sidewalk gods,
conversing with the cracks of my mind.
They seek out their fellows.
clamping onto visages,
searching for the kindred soul.
grasping, reaching , longing,
belching out romance at the top of their lungs.
Oedipus I do not pity you,
But rather long for cool pools of darkness
that leave you lost to the terrors of the night,
as you sink softly down beyond the reach of the savage eye.
I have two smallish hazel eyes.
They are not extraordinary in every way except...
They cannot lie.
HOW I DESPISE THEM!
They leak, when I need them waterproof,
Glare when I need them gentle,
Roll into their skull when I need them alert.
They breathe fire.
Smoldering for hours as I lay in bed,
Thwarting my every effort to make them behave.
They give me away at every opportunity.
Forcing my head down to pray to the sidewalk gods,
conversing with the cracks of my mind.
They seek out their fellows.
clamping onto visages,
searching for the kindred soul.
grasping, reaching , longing,
belching out romance at the top of their lungs.
Oedipus I do not pity you,
But rather long for cool pools of darkness
that leave you lost to the terrors of the night,
as you sink softly down beyond the reach of the savage eye.
Lethe
Lethe
I devour sleep.
It courses through me,
leaving behind a reclined corpse twitching under the dim firmament.
I suckle on the teat of a moonlit goddess
draining the night dry.
And when I have had my fill...
I dream.
Carried beyond the threshold,
over cobbled streets still littered with the daily rubbish.
I break the ties that bind and go to the river,
more shade than man.
The night is mine alone and I bathe in deep waters.
Seeing visions of worlds far beyond where feet may tread.
I reach out ... grasping… clenching... but the stars fade.
And I awaken with tears on my pillow and cold sweat on my brow.
I devour sleep.
It courses through me,
leaving behind a reclined corpse twitching under the dim firmament.
I suckle on the teat of a moonlit goddess
draining the night dry.
And when I have had my fill...
I dream.
Carried beyond the threshold,
over cobbled streets still littered with the daily rubbish.
I break the ties that bind and go to the river,
more shade than man.
The night is mine alone and I bathe in deep waters.
Seeing visions of worlds far beyond where feet may tread.
I reach out ... grasping… clenching... but the stars fade.
And I awaken with tears on my pillow and cold sweat on my brow.
The Flirt
The Flirt
A cheap smile, a lingering glance, a knowing wink
The scarlet cock struts across the stage.
You are why the Lord created men
The fathers lock their doors
The blushing Azalea drops its petals soft on quilted sheets.
Is it your oily cologne that draws them to you?
The two day greasy stubble, sharp against their cheek?
Or is it the manic glint in your eye?
Two bloody aces coldly waiting for Lady Luck come to roost.
A cheap smile, a lingering glance, a knowing wink
The scarlet cock struts across the stage.
You are why the Lord created men
The fathers lock their doors
The blushing Azalea drops its petals soft on quilted sheets.
Is it your oily cologne that draws them to you?
The two day greasy stubble, sharp against their cheek?
Or is it the manic glint in your eye?
Two bloody aces coldly waiting for Lady Luck come to roost.
The Pinecone
The pine-cone has thirty-two rows of brittle spines protecting seeds ready to be dispersed upon an unfriendly world. She is the color of milk Hersey’s chocolate and when rubbed slowly, calls out like a rainmaker. She is a nursery, holding within the hopes and dreams of a stately pine. As you are trodden upon and become the diet of worms you complete your task, dyeing and yet giving life to a generation to come. You smell of sap and warm summer evenings basking in the glow of an ever-green forest. You dream of days spent swaying in the breeze with your comrades, leisurely looking down upon the comings and goings of a mad world. You grew strong and wise, thinking deep thoughts and dreaming deep dreams. And then you fell… down, down, down, with the wind rushing by and the earth quickly coming to focus, a world you’ve only seen from a distance. I found you hiding under a bush, slightly soggy, becoming accustomed to a new life among the ants and thistles, sharing your secrets of the world above. And now you are in my hand waiting to again find the soft earth and lose yourself within.
The Birth of a Liar
“Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of art.”
-Oscar Wilde
I am a liar… Believe me?
At this point the preceding may be the only statement I can make which you would be willing to accept at face value. For when an individual is branded a liar in as dramatic a fashion as I have, no one is likely to believe a word he says. This is human nature. But before you become skeptical of my story, please keep one thought in mind. In all the tabloid accounts of my trial has it been suggested that I am mentally unstable? I think not. And only an unsound mind lies when there is nothing to be gained. I have received my sentence, twenty-five years of hard time with no chance for parole. And nothing I do or say can change that. Wait… That’s a lie. Old habits die hard. The Honorable Judge Terence has promised to reduce my sentence to fifteen years if I give a truthful account of my story to The New York Post. He has also promised that nothing I say here will be used against me in a court of law. So there you have it. For once the truth really does set you free.
Now, you are most likely expecting me to begin my tale by spinning some sort of yarn about how remorseful I really am and tell you that if I could do it all again I would have stayed on the path of righteousness and never tarried down the shady corridors of vice. However, I fear it is my obligation to admit that I have no such regrets regarding how I have spent my life to this point, except for one unfortunate decision which may well haunt me to my dying day. I leave to your imagination why I have started to doubt myself but you can make a fairly good stab at the truth by stealing a glance at my present lodgings. Thick metal bars separate me from the world and my only piece of furniture is a hard narrow bed which turns the quaint phrase “don’t let the bed bugs bite” into a dire warning. It’s interesting how a few nights in jail can make even the most confident man reconsider a few things. But I’m jumping ahead. The only way to really understand my demise requires us to take a little journey back to my childhood where I received my first practical lesson in the art of lying.
For some strange reason, much of the world is obsessed with the notion that if something happens first it must be worth remembering. Mothers look on anxiously as their little ones approach their first steps. Entrepreneurs save their first dollars. Young men wax poetry of their first kisses. My first kiss, however, would not be considered by some to be strictly poetic. It came from the warm salty lips of my mother’s border collie and for some reason lacked much of the feminine allure that I would come to appreciate in later life. I have now had more than my fair share of smooching and can say with some authority that the very best kisses are flavored with just a hint of dry single malt whiskey. When I find myself at the receiving end of one of these kisses two facts become clear: one the lady has excellent taste in her liquor as well as her men and two, in her present condition the kiss could lead to something a bit more interesting for everyone involved. But I digress.
There are few milestones from my childhood that I have chosen to remember, possibly due to the fact that my past has changed quite often to fit the needs of my present. However, I doubt I shall ever forget the circumstances surrounding my first real lie. Now I am of the opinion that we are all born perfectly honest liars and that it is the function of any decent society to steal our honesty away from us, often by force. Most children don’t really lie with any conviction until the age of twelve or thirteen, right about the time when they first become acquainted with the opposite gender. At this time society offers a rather valuable lesson. No matter what our parents or preachers tells us there is absolutely nothing indecent with a well placed falsehood; it’s only when you get caught that people start to have issues. I learned my lesson a bit early in life as it was at the age of seven when I discovered the value of the well crafted lie. At the time I was just an innocent little scamp barely able to stand on his own to legs but I knew what I needed, the freedom to do exactly what I wanted. To achieve this goal I found myself in dire need of deception. And so I told a lie, deliberately and spectacularly. One that would lead me down a path I have followed to this day
I grew up in a small rural town in southern Ohio which will remain nameless here as I am quite sure they have disenfranchised me by this point. Being a rather rowdy boy who took little stock in rules or the sage advice of my superiors, I was pegged as a bit of a troublemaker in school. My teacher, Mrs. Levitt, never was overly fond of me. She couldn’t comprehend that when a young boy leaves a pretty little garter snake in Susie Q’s desk it is a sign of affection, or that nap time is in reality cruel and unusual punishment warranting retribution by aerial slingshot assault. The only reason my hide wasn’t continuously tanned by her well seasoned arm was that try as she might she could never prove that I was behind any one of my amusing jests. Even so she always would keep a close eye on me, just waiting for me to slip up and find my luck had run out. On one particular occasion she almost had her wish.
It was a cool clear morning in late September and the last of the wild blackberries were hanging precariously low on the vine as I sulked along the well worn path to the old school house. Just that morning my folks, always enlightened when it came to my education, had told me that if word should get back to them that I happened to get lost along the way to school I would find myself in more trouble than that old coyote Pa found hanging round the chicken coop. As I had yet to learn that fathers rarely skin their own progeny unless they get caught up in politics, I took this warning very seriously indeed. However, I would not go to school with a light heart. According to the farmer’s almanac, this would be the last day of what had been a spectacular Indian summer spent climbing through apple trees and roasting wieners by the light of the moon. But all that was behind me now. Already thick clouds were gathering before me as I considered that the last hours of my summer would be spent in a world of dry slate boards and even drier schooling. By the time I finally turned up the school house stairs, I was in a sad state indeed and my depression only deepened when I took one last look behind and saw the sun just peeping up over a distant hill. The normally cheery fellow looked like a grieving friend who was gently reproaching me as I turned my back to him and slowly closed the door behind me.
If the preceding paragraph seems to you a bit dramatic please forgive my memory. But the world of a seven year old boy has few yesterdays to consider and an endless supply of tomorrows to fear. The point of the matter is I needed to be free of that school or else my poor young heart would shatter into a million pieces. Variations of plans to achieve this freedom ran circles through my head as the day began to take on a slow crawling rhythm reserved for times in our lives when we are trapped in a place we’d rather not be. As my thoughts took on a more tangible form I began to feel the incubus of a plan growing in the space between my little blue eyes. It was a plan that would require resourcefulness beyond my years and a brilliance beyond my education. But how could have known that? The one thought that kept me going was that classes would be letting out a bit early today. No obstacle was going to stand in my way.
If there was one part of my education I could tolerate reasonably well it was our half hour forays into the great outdoors. Mrs. Levitt would lead us like a trained company of little cherubs over hill and valley in a vain attempt to squeeze out a bit of the pent up energy we kept stored under our skin. Now you may think that these reprises look like a sign of a mutual understanding between Mrs. Levitt and ourselves but do not be deceived. In reality the women placed more confidence in a jar of wooden nickels than any one of us. Lately she had even taken to locking the front door of the school house on her way out as if she was fearful of finding a small critter in her desk when classes resumed. When I first noticed her actions they seemed petty and lacking in basic Christian charity, but after some consideration I forgave her as her skeptical nature was going to provide the opportunity I needed to ensure a prolonged reprisal from my desk.
Today we would be walking down an old wagon trail to a trickle of a brook running behind Edison’s half acre. This was a favorite path of Mrs. Levitt’s as the walkway was lined with old hickories that provide some protection from the noonday sun. As my teacher was taking in the vegetation my eyes naturally gravitated to the muddy river bank, which I knew to be teaming with interesting wildlife which could come in handy for the day’s labors. I needed to divert Mrs. Levitt’s attention for a short period of time and knew my classmates were more than prepared to come to my assistance if given the opportunity. Mrs. Levitt’s fifteen minute lecture regarding the manner in which we were expected to behave on our walks were never given much heed and she often lost control of us as soon as we escaped her natural habitat and entered into our own. Dissension within the ranks began as soon as we saw the light of day and would grow more palpable with every step we took away from our prison cells. With the weather as gorgeous as it was I knew I could easily ignite a spark that would give me the opportunity to wander off with Mrs. Levitt being none the wiser.
Suddenly I found just what I was looking for, a fat old layabout of a bullfrog sunning himself on a rotting stump by the river’s edge. I took this fella to be a kindred spirit and felt terrible waking him but decided that at this particular moment my needs were greater than his own. And so in a flash I scooped up the gentleman with my clever littler fingers and placed him gently among the silky tresses of Ms. Suzie Q, who happened to be in possession of the loudest screech in the tri-county area. By this point half the class was aware of the drama unfolding in front of them but their curiosity to see what was going to happen next overwhelmed their sense of duty to try to prevent it. A few minutes passed in hushed silence as the old soul slowly woke up to realize that somehow he had ended up a considerable distance off the ground. Being by nature somewhat of an acrophobic, he started fidgeting about up there looking for a way to return to the safety of his stump. And to my own and much of the class’s great pleasure, he finally decided that the best way to do so was to crawl right down the steep slope of Ms. Suzie Q’s rosy face. As he began his descent a long slimy leg slowly brushed passed a pretty little eyebrow and stuck with a pleasing plop right on her left nostril.
The uproar that ensued reminded me of the last time mom’s old collie broke his chain to have some fun with the chickens. Suzie Q leapt three feet straight in the air and broke into a complicated rain dance squawking in terror with such conviction that she could have secured a position in any operatic company this side of the Mississippi. The critter dangling from her wanted no part of this at all but by this time he was glued so firmly to her face that it might well take a surgical procedure to abstract him. Finally Suzie Q totally panicked and ran off into the underbrush trailed by half the class and a angry Mrs. Levitt all hoping to catch her and pry the poor confused froggie off of her. And just like that I found myself alone in the woods with all the time I needed to pull off my master plan. And so I scooped up some thick black mud from the river bed and, putting to good use a lesson I learned from Mr. Hopalong Cassidy, ran back to the school like I had a whole company of red faced savages dogging my steps.
I had little time to celebrate my dramatic escape after I made my way back to the school house. I now needed to make sure that the old building would not be open for operations any time in the near future. I smothered the creek bank mud deep into the key hole of the schoolhouse door with much satisfaction, jamming the lock in such a manner that it would be impossible for anything but divine intervention to unseal it. There was no other entrance to the building except a little old stovepipe that not even a little jaybird could fit through and it would take someone a solid week to clean out the now ruined lock. Chuckling under my breath I ran back to the creek just in time to hear Mrs. Levitt’s call, by this time exhausted but triumphant. I had every reason to believe that soon I would be free to spend the rest of my days enjoying the absolute leisure of absolute freedom. Unbeknownst to me however, I had forgotten one obvious detail that could very well spoil my plans. Mud does not only stick to key holes.
On most occasions Ms. Levitt would have withstood the strain of the muddy lock with stoic reserve. However this was not one of those occasions. Her normally docile demeanor had already been thoroughly tested today as a result the day’s events. I could almost see her blood pressure rise as she gathered us up like chickens under her wing; calming the still spastic Suzie Q through clenched teeth as she considered how she would get her vengeance on whoever was responsible for this mess. Her mood further eroding when no one was willing to tell her which of us no good rotten troublemakers had put the frog in the poor soul’s hair. Like any band of prisoners we were a tightly knit unit with every one of us willing to undergo extreme torture before turning in one of our own.
And now with a mangled lock before she dove right over the cliff of sanity and decided to take a swim in the oceans of the furry. Her eyes turned bright and started to lose focus as they turned to study the now useless apparatus before her. I could see that the woman was considering whipping the tar out of every last one of us but lacked the strength of will to sink to such barbarous measures. Her mind became transparent as her eyes finally left the lock and came to rest on the faces of the children standing before her, looking for any sign of weakness. By this point she knew that classes would be canceled for the immediate future, but not before she had some measure of revenge against us.
At this moment the world stood stock still and certain facts made themselves perfectly clear regarding my present situation. I would not be able to withstand any sort of close inspection in my present condition. My hands were thickly coated in the rich black mud of the pond and my scrawny little frame smelt strongly of slime and earth. These superficial happenstances would be more than sufficient to ensure a guilty verdict from the crazed woman now coming towards me. As her unforgiving form grew larger and larger, my hind end already began to feel sore and my little heart began to convulse in time with her twitching fingers which obviously longed to have a supple willow branch clenched between them.
Ms. Levitt was well versed in the use of the ancient willow growing beside the swing. The tree was her only defense against our wild habits, and she was quite adept at using its branches to inflict as much pain as possible unto us while leaving behind only minimal scarring. When she was in peak form, she could have a kid in tears within five lashes regardless of how strong their will was to retain his dignity. To say that the idea of finding myself in this unstable woman’s power terrified me would not be an overstatement. In fact to this day I cannot recall a moment of my life in which I was closer to losing my grip on reality entirely. As her blood shot eyes approached I prayed for divine assistance, looking upward towards the sun for assistance.
These are the times that try a boy’s soul. My usual carefree attitude was replaced with one similar to that of a rabbit finding his foot caught in a hunters trap. I needed a way out and quick. Wt this point your average seven year old mind freezes and leaves its owner helpless to whatever crisis threatening to engulf him. However, I was not your average seven year old. My fears did not distract me but rather focused my mind into a search for the path leading to safety. Society had placed me in a position in which I had only one real option… lie through my teeth to save my skin. It would not be easy.
Fighting against every one of my survival instincts I ran right passed Mrs. Levitt and right up the old school house as if my life depended on it. I shot up like a cork, grabbing at old ivy vines and shingles like a daddy longlegs up a waterspout. By the time anyone could realize what I was doing I was already on the roof looking down at her.
“Johnny! What in the name of all things holy are you doing up there?”
I appreciated the fact that the woman looked s less intimidating from up here. I knew her knees were going bad and I was sure she hadn’t climbed so much as an apple tree in a long time.
“Well you see Ms. Levitt, my folks and I are heading to the big top show down in Springvale tonight… and well.”
I put a dramatic pause in here for effect, hoping she’d take the bait.
“Well what Johnny? You better have a good reason for being up there else I’m coming up to catch you myself. She bit.
“No Ms. Levitt please don’t.” I called down to her, tears glistening on my tanned cheeks, the very model of a desperate little boy who was at his wits end.
“Please Ms. Levitt, I need to get in there or I’m a goner. I brought our tickets to school today to show to Scottie and I left the darn things right in my desk. Now those tickets cost my paw a whole four bits and he might just take it out of my hide if I can’t get them back. Just let me shimmy down this here old stovepipe like Santa and… and open that old front door up again.”
Now I may have been a bit of a welter weight in my time but it was fairly obvious to everyone wathching that there was no way I was gonna fit down that old stovepipe. I haven’t met a soul yet who could have accomplished the feat except for a little midget of a man who made his living getting shot out of a cannon down in Cincy. Did this stop me from trying? Of course it did not. I make a good show of trying wiggling around till my little rump got stuck down there for a bit while the whole class had a good laugh at me. Even Ms. Levitt seemed to think my antics were a tad bit amusing, especially when I made another effort by sticking my little head down that pipe only to come back up looking like I was getting ready to play Mr. Bo-Jangles for some blackface show.
“Get off of there ya blackbird. Ain’t no use trying to git down that old stovepipe.”
Mrs. Levitt tried to put a hard edge to her voice but it was no use. I was far too pathetic a spectacle to stay angry at. It took her all of five seconds to break into a grin in spite of herself and give in, chuckling loudly enough me to hear from my perch. I knew at that moment that I was safe. I glanced up at that old sun and saw the he too was smiling down at me, obviously pleased with my trick. We would have the rest of the day to enjoy each others company. All that was left now was to scurry back to the ground knowing that my teacher no longer suspected me of any crime except stupidity. I had successfully calmed her savage soul and instead of a thrashing ended up with her pity. She sent me back to the creek without another word to wash up and go home.
And this would be just the beginning of my life as a liar. I had discovered my real gift in life, and would continue to hone my skills until I became a seasoned veteran of the art. But that is a story for another day. Lights are about to be turned out in my cell block and I don’t think I’ll be able say much more tonight. Is that a lie? For once you’re gonna have to figure that out for yourself.
“Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of art.”
-Oscar Wilde
I am a liar… Believe me?
At this point the preceding may be the only statement I can make which you would be willing to accept at face value. For when an individual is branded a liar in as dramatic a fashion as I have, no one is likely to believe a word he says. This is human nature. But before you become skeptical of my story, please keep one thought in mind. In all the tabloid accounts of my trial has it been suggested that I am mentally unstable? I think not. And only an unsound mind lies when there is nothing to be gained. I have received my sentence, twenty-five years of hard time with no chance for parole. And nothing I do or say can change that. Wait… That’s a lie. Old habits die hard. The Honorable Judge Terence has promised to reduce my sentence to fifteen years if I give a truthful account of my story to The New York Post. He has also promised that nothing I say here will be used against me in a court of law. So there you have it. For once the truth really does set you free.
Now, you are most likely expecting me to begin my tale by spinning some sort of yarn about how remorseful I really am and tell you that if I could do it all again I would have stayed on the path of righteousness and never tarried down the shady corridors of vice. However, I fear it is my obligation to admit that I have no such regrets regarding how I have spent my life to this point, except for one unfortunate decision which may well haunt me to my dying day. I leave to your imagination why I have started to doubt myself but you can make a fairly good stab at the truth by stealing a glance at my present lodgings. Thick metal bars separate me from the world and my only piece of furniture is a hard narrow bed which turns the quaint phrase “don’t let the bed bugs bite” into a dire warning. It’s interesting how a few nights in jail can make even the most confident man reconsider a few things. But I’m jumping ahead. The only way to really understand my demise requires us to take a little journey back to my childhood where I received my first practical lesson in the art of lying.
For some strange reason, much of the world is obsessed with the notion that if something happens first it must be worth remembering. Mothers look on anxiously as their little ones approach their first steps. Entrepreneurs save their first dollars. Young men wax poetry of their first kisses. My first kiss, however, would not be considered by some to be strictly poetic. It came from the warm salty lips of my mother’s border collie and for some reason lacked much of the feminine allure that I would come to appreciate in later life. I have now had more than my fair share of smooching and can say with some authority that the very best kisses are flavored with just a hint of dry single malt whiskey. When I find myself at the receiving end of one of these kisses two facts become clear: one the lady has excellent taste in her liquor as well as her men and two, in her present condition the kiss could lead to something a bit more interesting for everyone involved. But I digress.
There are few milestones from my childhood that I have chosen to remember, possibly due to the fact that my past has changed quite often to fit the needs of my present. However, I doubt I shall ever forget the circumstances surrounding my first real lie. Now I am of the opinion that we are all born perfectly honest liars and that it is the function of any decent society to steal our honesty away from us, often by force. Most children don’t really lie with any conviction until the age of twelve or thirteen, right about the time when they first become acquainted with the opposite gender. At this time society offers a rather valuable lesson. No matter what our parents or preachers tells us there is absolutely nothing indecent with a well placed falsehood; it’s only when you get caught that people start to have issues. I learned my lesson a bit early in life as it was at the age of seven when I discovered the value of the well crafted lie. At the time I was just an innocent little scamp barely able to stand on his own to legs but I knew what I needed, the freedom to do exactly what I wanted. To achieve this goal I found myself in dire need of deception. And so I told a lie, deliberately and spectacularly. One that would lead me down a path I have followed to this day
I grew up in a small rural town in southern Ohio which will remain nameless here as I am quite sure they have disenfranchised me by this point. Being a rather rowdy boy who took little stock in rules or the sage advice of my superiors, I was pegged as a bit of a troublemaker in school. My teacher, Mrs. Levitt, never was overly fond of me. She couldn’t comprehend that when a young boy leaves a pretty little garter snake in Susie Q’s desk it is a sign of affection, or that nap time is in reality cruel and unusual punishment warranting retribution by aerial slingshot assault. The only reason my hide wasn’t continuously tanned by her well seasoned arm was that try as she might she could never prove that I was behind any one of my amusing jests. Even so she always would keep a close eye on me, just waiting for me to slip up and find my luck had run out. On one particular occasion she almost had her wish.
It was a cool clear morning in late September and the last of the wild blackberries were hanging precariously low on the vine as I sulked along the well worn path to the old school house. Just that morning my folks, always enlightened when it came to my education, had told me that if word should get back to them that I happened to get lost along the way to school I would find myself in more trouble than that old coyote Pa found hanging round the chicken coop. As I had yet to learn that fathers rarely skin their own progeny unless they get caught up in politics, I took this warning very seriously indeed. However, I would not go to school with a light heart. According to the farmer’s almanac, this would be the last day of what had been a spectacular Indian summer spent climbing through apple trees and roasting wieners by the light of the moon. But all that was behind me now. Already thick clouds were gathering before me as I considered that the last hours of my summer would be spent in a world of dry slate boards and even drier schooling. By the time I finally turned up the school house stairs, I was in a sad state indeed and my depression only deepened when I took one last look behind and saw the sun just peeping up over a distant hill. The normally cheery fellow looked like a grieving friend who was gently reproaching me as I turned my back to him and slowly closed the door behind me.
If the preceding paragraph seems to you a bit dramatic please forgive my memory. But the world of a seven year old boy has few yesterdays to consider and an endless supply of tomorrows to fear. The point of the matter is I needed to be free of that school or else my poor young heart would shatter into a million pieces. Variations of plans to achieve this freedom ran circles through my head as the day began to take on a slow crawling rhythm reserved for times in our lives when we are trapped in a place we’d rather not be. As my thoughts took on a more tangible form I began to feel the incubus of a plan growing in the space between my little blue eyes. It was a plan that would require resourcefulness beyond my years and a brilliance beyond my education. But how could have known that? The one thought that kept me going was that classes would be letting out a bit early today. No obstacle was going to stand in my way.
If there was one part of my education I could tolerate reasonably well it was our half hour forays into the great outdoors. Mrs. Levitt would lead us like a trained company of little cherubs over hill and valley in a vain attempt to squeeze out a bit of the pent up energy we kept stored under our skin. Now you may think that these reprises look like a sign of a mutual understanding between Mrs. Levitt and ourselves but do not be deceived. In reality the women placed more confidence in a jar of wooden nickels than any one of us. Lately she had even taken to locking the front door of the school house on her way out as if she was fearful of finding a small critter in her desk when classes resumed. When I first noticed her actions they seemed petty and lacking in basic Christian charity, but after some consideration I forgave her as her skeptical nature was going to provide the opportunity I needed to ensure a prolonged reprisal from my desk.
Today we would be walking down an old wagon trail to a trickle of a brook running behind Edison’s half acre. This was a favorite path of Mrs. Levitt’s as the walkway was lined with old hickories that provide some protection from the noonday sun. As my teacher was taking in the vegetation my eyes naturally gravitated to the muddy river bank, which I knew to be teaming with interesting wildlife which could come in handy for the day’s labors. I needed to divert Mrs. Levitt’s attention for a short period of time and knew my classmates were more than prepared to come to my assistance if given the opportunity. Mrs. Levitt’s fifteen minute lecture regarding the manner in which we were expected to behave on our walks were never given much heed and she often lost control of us as soon as we escaped her natural habitat and entered into our own. Dissension within the ranks began as soon as we saw the light of day and would grow more palpable with every step we took away from our prison cells. With the weather as gorgeous as it was I knew I could easily ignite a spark that would give me the opportunity to wander off with Mrs. Levitt being none the wiser.
Suddenly I found just what I was looking for, a fat old layabout of a bullfrog sunning himself on a rotting stump by the river’s edge. I took this fella to be a kindred spirit and felt terrible waking him but decided that at this particular moment my needs were greater than his own. And so in a flash I scooped up the gentleman with my clever littler fingers and placed him gently among the silky tresses of Ms. Suzie Q, who happened to be in possession of the loudest screech in the tri-county area. By this point half the class was aware of the drama unfolding in front of them but their curiosity to see what was going to happen next overwhelmed their sense of duty to try to prevent it. A few minutes passed in hushed silence as the old soul slowly woke up to realize that somehow he had ended up a considerable distance off the ground. Being by nature somewhat of an acrophobic, he started fidgeting about up there looking for a way to return to the safety of his stump. And to my own and much of the class’s great pleasure, he finally decided that the best way to do so was to crawl right down the steep slope of Ms. Suzie Q’s rosy face. As he began his descent a long slimy leg slowly brushed passed a pretty little eyebrow and stuck with a pleasing plop right on her left nostril.
The uproar that ensued reminded me of the last time mom’s old collie broke his chain to have some fun with the chickens. Suzie Q leapt three feet straight in the air and broke into a complicated rain dance squawking in terror with such conviction that she could have secured a position in any operatic company this side of the Mississippi. The critter dangling from her wanted no part of this at all but by this time he was glued so firmly to her face that it might well take a surgical procedure to abstract him. Finally Suzie Q totally panicked and ran off into the underbrush trailed by half the class and a angry Mrs. Levitt all hoping to catch her and pry the poor confused froggie off of her. And just like that I found myself alone in the woods with all the time I needed to pull off my master plan. And so I scooped up some thick black mud from the river bed and, putting to good use a lesson I learned from Mr. Hopalong Cassidy, ran back to the school like I had a whole company of red faced savages dogging my steps.
I had little time to celebrate my dramatic escape after I made my way back to the school house. I now needed to make sure that the old building would not be open for operations any time in the near future. I smothered the creek bank mud deep into the key hole of the schoolhouse door with much satisfaction, jamming the lock in such a manner that it would be impossible for anything but divine intervention to unseal it. There was no other entrance to the building except a little old stovepipe that not even a little jaybird could fit through and it would take someone a solid week to clean out the now ruined lock. Chuckling under my breath I ran back to the creek just in time to hear Mrs. Levitt’s call, by this time exhausted but triumphant. I had every reason to believe that soon I would be free to spend the rest of my days enjoying the absolute leisure of absolute freedom. Unbeknownst to me however, I had forgotten one obvious detail that could very well spoil my plans. Mud does not only stick to key holes.
On most occasions Ms. Levitt would have withstood the strain of the muddy lock with stoic reserve. However this was not one of those occasions. Her normally docile demeanor had already been thoroughly tested today as a result the day’s events. I could almost see her blood pressure rise as she gathered us up like chickens under her wing; calming the still spastic Suzie Q through clenched teeth as she considered how she would get her vengeance on whoever was responsible for this mess. Her mood further eroding when no one was willing to tell her which of us no good rotten troublemakers had put the frog in the poor soul’s hair. Like any band of prisoners we were a tightly knit unit with every one of us willing to undergo extreme torture before turning in one of our own.
And now with a mangled lock before she dove right over the cliff of sanity and decided to take a swim in the oceans of the furry. Her eyes turned bright and started to lose focus as they turned to study the now useless apparatus before her. I could see that the woman was considering whipping the tar out of every last one of us but lacked the strength of will to sink to such barbarous measures. Her mind became transparent as her eyes finally left the lock and came to rest on the faces of the children standing before her, looking for any sign of weakness. By this point she knew that classes would be canceled for the immediate future, but not before she had some measure of revenge against us.
At this moment the world stood stock still and certain facts made themselves perfectly clear regarding my present situation. I would not be able to withstand any sort of close inspection in my present condition. My hands were thickly coated in the rich black mud of the pond and my scrawny little frame smelt strongly of slime and earth. These superficial happenstances would be more than sufficient to ensure a guilty verdict from the crazed woman now coming towards me. As her unforgiving form grew larger and larger, my hind end already began to feel sore and my little heart began to convulse in time with her twitching fingers which obviously longed to have a supple willow branch clenched between them.
Ms. Levitt was well versed in the use of the ancient willow growing beside the swing. The tree was her only defense against our wild habits, and she was quite adept at using its branches to inflict as much pain as possible unto us while leaving behind only minimal scarring. When she was in peak form, she could have a kid in tears within five lashes regardless of how strong their will was to retain his dignity. To say that the idea of finding myself in this unstable woman’s power terrified me would not be an overstatement. In fact to this day I cannot recall a moment of my life in which I was closer to losing my grip on reality entirely. As her blood shot eyes approached I prayed for divine assistance, looking upward towards the sun for assistance.
These are the times that try a boy’s soul. My usual carefree attitude was replaced with one similar to that of a rabbit finding his foot caught in a hunters trap. I needed a way out and quick. Wt this point your average seven year old mind freezes and leaves its owner helpless to whatever crisis threatening to engulf him. However, I was not your average seven year old. My fears did not distract me but rather focused my mind into a search for the path leading to safety. Society had placed me in a position in which I had only one real option… lie through my teeth to save my skin. It would not be easy.
Fighting against every one of my survival instincts I ran right passed Mrs. Levitt and right up the old school house as if my life depended on it. I shot up like a cork, grabbing at old ivy vines and shingles like a daddy longlegs up a waterspout. By the time anyone could realize what I was doing I was already on the roof looking down at her.
“Johnny! What in the name of all things holy are you doing up there?”
I appreciated the fact that the woman looked s less intimidating from up here. I knew her knees were going bad and I was sure she hadn’t climbed so much as an apple tree in a long time.
“Well you see Ms. Levitt, my folks and I are heading to the big top show down in Springvale tonight… and well.”
I put a dramatic pause in here for effect, hoping she’d take the bait.
“Well what Johnny? You better have a good reason for being up there else I’m coming up to catch you myself. She bit.
“No Ms. Levitt please don’t.” I called down to her, tears glistening on my tanned cheeks, the very model of a desperate little boy who was at his wits end.
“Please Ms. Levitt, I need to get in there or I’m a goner. I brought our tickets to school today to show to Scottie and I left the darn things right in my desk. Now those tickets cost my paw a whole four bits and he might just take it out of my hide if I can’t get them back. Just let me shimmy down this here old stovepipe like Santa and… and open that old front door up again.”
Now I may have been a bit of a welter weight in my time but it was fairly obvious to everyone wathching that there was no way I was gonna fit down that old stovepipe. I haven’t met a soul yet who could have accomplished the feat except for a little midget of a man who made his living getting shot out of a cannon down in Cincy. Did this stop me from trying? Of course it did not. I make a good show of trying wiggling around till my little rump got stuck down there for a bit while the whole class had a good laugh at me. Even Ms. Levitt seemed to think my antics were a tad bit amusing, especially when I made another effort by sticking my little head down that pipe only to come back up looking like I was getting ready to play Mr. Bo-Jangles for some blackface show.
“Get off of there ya blackbird. Ain’t no use trying to git down that old stovepipe.”
Mrs. Levitt tried to put a hard edge to her voice but it was no use. I was far too pathetic a spectacle to stay angry at. It took her all of five seconds to break into a grin in spite of herself and give in, chuckling loudly enough me to hear from my perch. I knew at that moment that I was safe. I glanced up at that old sun and saw the he too was smiling down at me, obviously pleased with my trick. We would have the rest of the day to enjoy each others company. All that was left now was to scurry back to the ground knowing that my teacher no longer suspected me of any crime except stupidity. I had successfully calmed her savage soul and instead of a thrashing ended up with her pity. She sent me back to the creek without another word to wash up and go home.
And this would be just the beginning of my life as a liar. I had discovered my real gift in life, and would continue to hone my skills until I became a seasoned veteran of the art. But that is a story for another day. Lights are about to be turned out in my cell block and I don’t think I’ll be able say much more tonight. Is that a lie? For once you’re gonna have to figure that out for yourself.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
