Cameron Wood (A Short Story)

 

                        By Robert Pettus

“Wake up and dance, you old bitch!” came a booming, slurred voice. The sound of it reverberated off the thin walls of the now closed dive bar.

Mikey nudged the bartender, Elliot, who was sleeping in a Windsor-back side chair in front of the counter. He was snoring, sliding slowly from his seat. Elliot, being the only bartender, also owned the bar.

Mikey kicked Elliot, he thought gently, in the shins. Elliot lunged forward, snapping awake:

“What the fuck!” he said.

“Wake up and dance,” repeated Mikey, now boot-scooting across the hardwood flooring of the dark bar. The place was closed. Elliot wasn’t sure how Mikey got in, but he knew that it would be damn-near impossible to kick his ass out.

Mikey brought more money into the tiny town of Grayslick than all the other 200 or so residents combined. As soon as he moved in two years prior, he began growing the biggest field of grass you’d ever seen, and no one batted an eye at it. Not the local cops, not even the Kentucky State boys. Hell, Grayslick residents loved him. The old ladies at St Anthony Catholic Church – the only church in town – conjured up some home-cooked goodness for him damn-near every day of the week. Chicken tetrazzini, cherry cheesecake, banana croquette – everything he liked. He never had to go to the grocery. He was a local celebrity.

“Get the hell out of here, Mikey,” said Elliot, “You goddamn, spaghetti-eating motherfucker.”

Elliot called Mikey a spaghetti-eating motherfucker because Mikey was Italian. He was the only ethnically Italian person in Grayslick. Elliot didn’t know any racial slurs for Italian people, so he made up ‘spaghetti-eating motherfucker’. He also liked calling him ‘Tommy Mozzarella’ – spoken in what he thought was a New Jersey accent. It didn’t sound very Jersey, though – he couldn’t completely mask his rural Kentucky drawl when making vowel sounds.  It got under Mikey’s skin, sometimes. Not tonight, though.

“Hey now, hey!” said Mikey. He was in a jovial mood, “I got no intention of getting out of here. I’m not done partying tonight – not quite yet. Them fuckers up in the field were too puss to get more beers once we killed the case, so I figured I’d see what in the hell you were up to. You fuckin’ sleepin’!”

“Yeah,” responded Elliot, “I was sleeping because I had a long day and I was fucking tired.”

“Aw, shut the hell up. You wasn’t tired. You and I both know there wasn’t nobody in this fuckin’ place. I know about it any time there’s a party at The Comfy Corner. I would have knowed about it if there was anything popping off here. You just a lazy old bitch!”

Mikey stepped over to the jukebox. Wrenching free a collection of quarters from his jeans pocket, some of which fell jingling to the floor, he slid a handful conveyor-like into the machine and pressed through the available tunes, flipping the selection of ‘45 records. It was an old jukebox, which was one of the main draws of the bar. The locals loved it. So did the out-of-towners, on the rare occasions they patronized The Comfy Corner. Mikey pushed the button impatiently, finally settling on Slow Train Coming, by Bob Dylan.

“Hell yeah!” he said, “Slow train comin’ ‘round the bend. That’s the truest shit I ever heard.”

Mikey dumped a heaping line of blow onto the counter. He sniffed it glutinously, snapping his head skyward – sweat flung from his long, black hair dampening the floor – screaming like a rabid raccoon. He finished the beer he had snagged for himself – a bottle of Schlitz, free of charge – and smashed it on the counter. He stumbled backward from the counter onto the dance floor and kept dancing, now livelier, though more belligerently. Elliot squinted at him in frustration. He didn’t feel comfortable kicking him out. Mikey was too well loved by the community; he was also crazier than shit – Elliot didn’t want to get on Mikey’s bad side. Nobody did. As much as they loved him, everyone in town knew it was true.

“Hey!” said Mikey, “Check this shit out.” He swaggered out the front door into the night. Elliot thought about closing the door and again locking up, but he knew he didn’t have enough time. It wouldn’t matter, anyway – Mikey would force his way back in. He returned a couple of minutes later, a sawed-off shotgun in hand:

“Look at this shit.” he said, flashing its barrel one-handed across the barroom as if scoping out what to blast. “We was hunting earlier,” he continued, “Couldn’t find a goddamn thing – not even a doe. Not even a goddamn dove. This bastard here is still fully loaded. Never hunted with it before today. I was looking forward to pointing it one-handed – like this – down the nose of a big-ass ten-point, just blowing its fuckin’ brains out all over the side of some tree. I don’t need no mounts for my walls, you know what I mean? I just need fuckin’ burgers for my grill. I need fuckin’ bacon wrapped, cream cheese stuffed birds for my belly.”

Mike was massaging his stomach, glaring in cocaine-addled excitability. He then started rubbing the barrel of the gun like he was jerking it off. He swayed it around the room, pointing it outward from his crotch as if it were his dick. The gun waved back and forth chaotically, out of tune with the stuttering, drunken step of Mikey’s boots. Out of rhythm with Bob Dylan’s prophetic, screaming vocals. He continued dancing to the music. He was struggling to maintain balance.

“Shit.” said Elliot, “Don’t fuck around with that thing. You could wind up…”

Mikey waved the shotgun back across the barroom, in his intoxicated state accidentally pulling the trigger. The canon erupted. It wasn’t a direct hit, but it was close. The deer slug struck and pierced Elliot just above his pelvis. The aging man slid from his chair, slithering involuntarily across the floor, leaving a necrotic, slug-like trail of blood, thumping his fist to the floor, and screaming as the thick, metallic liquid pooled.

Elliot was in agony. He could make no discernable language. He continued writhing. Mikey realized what he had done. He ran to Elliot, asking him if he was okay, stroking his thin gray hair. Elliot gave no response. Mikey turned and ran from the barroom, heading across the gravel street to St. Anthony Catholic Church, its steeple towering high above the surrounding central Kentucky wood – Cameron Wood, as the locals called it.

The angry spirits of a long-ago murdered family haunted the wood. Everyone in town knew that.

Mikey banged on the door, screaming for Father Dickey. Father Dickey would open up – Mikey knew that – Papa Dick was always there. Father Dickey lived next door; if he for some reason weren’t in the church, which he always was, he would still hear the noise from his adjacent, dainty hovel.

The creaking double front doors of the church sprung ajar:

“What?” said Father Dickey, rubbing his drooping, wrinkled eyelids, “What do you want, brother Mikey?”

“The bar!” said Mikey, “Come to the bar! Elliot been shot.”

“Shot?” said Father Dickey, “Do you think I can provide medical support? I can’t!”

“I know, I know.” said Mikey, “Ain’t know where else to go. Ain’t no hospitals in Grayslick, is there? Come on, let’s go – he fuckin’ dying in there!”

Father Dicky paced briskly into the bar, clothed in his black priestly garb. It was far too late for Elliot, who was bleeding out all over the floor. Who knows how long it would take to remove those stains from the wood; they may never fully clear.

The priest glanced backward, scowling at Mikey. Dickey wouldn’t say anything to him – Mikey was far too much of a hot head for proselytizing – but he thought Mikey understood his point, just from a look. Mikey could be dumber than hell, sometimes. He was a hell of a farmer and a natural businessman, but in all other facets of life, he was an idiot.

“It’s too late for him,” said Father Dickey, beginning to administer the last rights.

“Wha… what? What the hell do you mean it’s too late? The old bastard was just sitting there all grouchy-like just ten minutes ago. I shot him with a dull-ass deer slug; you can’t kill a man with a fuckin’ deer slug.”

Mikey was speaking frantically over Elliot’s babbling final confession. Father Dickey couldn’t understand a word – Elliot was far too incoherent – but he nodded, as if understanding. Elliot’s incoherent gurgle, combined with Mikey’s paranoid, childish raw emotion, filled the barroom with an unnerving, grating soundscape. This abysmal noise fused with the still-playing jukebox, which had continued the Bob Dylan album, now playing Gotta Serve Somebody.

Elliot gobbled up the body of Christ lip-smacking like an infant yet to learn manners. He was struggling to keep the unleavened bread in his mouth – pushing it out involuntarily with his uncooperative, dying tongue. He finally swallowed it, washing it down with the wine – a bottle of Gato Negro cabernet – Father Dickey had grabbed from behind the bar. It wasn’t standard, but he didn’t have any sacramental wine on him, so it would have to do. He blessed it. He thought Jesus would understand, considering the circumstances.

Elliot died. Father Dickey closed the bartender’s eyes with his shaking, wrinkly hands. Blood covered the entirety of the floor. Mikey, horrified, ran sprinting from the room, out the door, across the street, and toward the wood.

The streets were dark and barren – there were no streetlights in Grayslick. Mikey ran out of the bar, past the church, and through the adjacent Idle-Hour Park on his way to the wood. He hopped the chain-link fence of the baseball field, scrambling and flailing across the infield like a clumsy second baseman as he bolted through the dusty, cobweb-lined dugout, up the concrete steps, and into Cameron Wood.

The wood was black. It was always dark – darker than anyone thought it should ever be. Most Grayslick locals said it was because of the haunted presence of the Graves family – out-of-towners who had moved to Grayslick generations ago, back during the Great Depression, looking to open a business. Locals hated The Graves’, moving to such a small town like Grayslick and stealing commerce from in-town families during such an unfortunate economic time.

The Graves were allegedly murdered, but no one knew why. That case was never closed. They simply went into the forest one day for a picnic and didn’t return. Days later, when local folks had finally decided to recognize the bizarre nature of their stores continued vacancy, they checked the woods. They found the family dead in a clearing previously thought to be the most serene spot in Cameron Wood. The bodies weren’t peacefully deceased – they had been completely mutilated; limbs twisted morbidly in every unnatural direction; cracked bones split out from the skin. Their faces were drained pale, wide-eyed and screaming. Cameron Wood was decided haunted, after that, whether because of the presence of The Graves family, or of their twisted killer. Nobody went there; nobody besides Mikey.

 Mikey knew that story was a bunch of old horseshit. The wood was dark because it was old. It had never been chopped, never been plowed – it had grown thick, mostly undisturbed, for thousands of years. Crop rotation had yet to shift to that dark collection of ancient foliage. That’s why it was so dark. Mikey thought it was comforting, being in the wood. He liked the darkness, sometimes. It allowed him a mental escape.

Mikey continued sprinting. His heart – already beating at full blast thanks to both the adrenaline from the previous situation, and the remnant, chaotic energy from the coke – seemed to stabilize the more he ran. This helped Mikey calm down. He ran and ran, through the heart of the wood into a perfectly circular clearing. He knew the place well – he always came here when the cops pretended to be suspicious about his field of bud. It was an excellent place to escape.

Mikey sat kneeling on the soft ground, his breath heaving as he struggled to catch it. Even in the heat of summer, even in years of drought, this inner sanctum of the wood stayed somehow well-hydrated. Mikey felt refreshed simply being there. He continued panting, his hands clutched firmly to his thighs – his now dirty jeans sticking like glue to his chafing, sweaty legs. 

The wood further darkened, which Mikey considered strange. He didn’t spend much early-morning time this deep in the dewy thick of the trees, but he knew that it should be brightening outside. Morning was breaking, only not in Cameron Wood.

Mikey looked around the clearing. A wind was kicking up, rustling the dry leaves and dirt of the forest floor.

A circular, tornado-like gust abruptly blew spinning about the clearing. The brittle leaves ruffled from the ground skyward. Mikey noticed the leaves briefly taking a humanoid shape. They then fell back to the earth. The towering, old trees shook and groaned as if in otherworldly communication. No light shone in from outside their enclosed canopy. Mikey was afraid. He stood up and backed away, making to exit the wood. He didn’t care about the damn cops; he didn’t care about Elliot or Father Dickey – not anymore – he would risk it. This fuckin’ place was giving him the creeps. He turned his back to the forest clearing and darted in a frenzy toward the wall of dense foliage.

Before he could make it out of the clearing, he was swept up, legs first, hanging in the air. He was spun around, upside down, through the trees. Apathetic nocturnal wildlife gazed at him from the shaking branches – bats, raccoons, opossums, and owls looking on without care. Mikey shrieked in terror:

 “Ahhhhhhh! Fuck; Fuck!”

His body leveled; he was no longer upside down. His belly was facing the ground as if to fall the fifty feet back to the forest floor; a crushing belly flop. The possessed wind dropped him. He fell hard, hitting the soft dirt and immediately twisting uncontrollably, writhing in pain. The wind picked him back up. He was again upside down, revolving faster and faster as dead leaves swirled as if to encase him in a mummy-cocoon. Out from within the visual blockage created by the swirling leaves, he saw the ghostly figures of four people – a mother, a father, and two young children. The Graves family. They stood staring without care at what was happening. They weren’t creating the chaos – Mikey could feel that – but they also had no interest in stopping it.

The pressure from the force of the spinning wind was crushing. Mikey could feel it splitting his skin and bruising his bones. His eyeballs were pressed to at any moment dislodge. His teeth cracked, continuously buffeted by the supernatural weather. In his final moments, Mikey saw the red-tinted shape of Father Dickey run into the clearing. The priest expressed a knowing look; frantic, though unsurprised. Lifting a bible, he began yelling verses at the growing havoc. Mikey’s time had come. With the wind and the leaves still swirling around him – with the pressure finally becoming too much – Mikey’s body was split, literally. Blood and bone sprayed outward from the cyclone, coating Father Dickey, his bible still thrust forward in defense. The thick, red, life-sustaining liquid saturated the damp dirt of the clearing and the thin, waxy pages of Dickey’s ancient text.

Father Dickey knelt to the earth and sobbed. It had happened again. Looking forward, he saw the family – the first known family taken by this mysterious, demonic force. They looked at him and turned, without care, back into Cameron Wood. Mikey would soon join them, wherever they went.

Father Dickey wept, heaving in the clearing, inhaling dirt and dust. Above the canopy, a new day brightened.

About the author: 

Robert Pettus is an English as a Second Language teacher at the University of Cincinnati. Previously, he taught for four years in a combination of rural Thailand and Moscow, Russia. His short stories have been published in numerous webzines, magazines, podcasts, and literary journals. His first novel, titled Abry, was published this spring by Offbeat Reads. He lives in Kentucky with his wife, Mary, his daughter, Rowan, and his pet rabbit, Achilles.

Walk Softly into that Dark Night (A Poem)

 

                         By H.L. Dowless

Please walk softly into that dark night,

No use going out all bound up with a tense desire to fight;

The power of nature has its ultimate winning way,

Mankind must accept that it bears no final say.

 

Please tread lightly down that well worn

Forlorn trail,

What lies ahead nobody anywhere can tell.

Don’t make any waves along the way,

In a time beyond maybe another day.

 

Nobody on earth has caused your hurt,

The Lord of Heaven deserves no raging outburst;

‘Twas only him in the beginning who gave you first life,

“Tis only him who can lead you through this gloom

And any potential wicked weight.

 

Go out easily and smoothly rather than hard,

Keep thine eyes focused upon twinkling midnight stars.

Breathe out easily and simply let it all go!

Allow the curtain of secular life to fall down,

It's the end of mortality’s show.

 

Don’t go out with anger wound up inside thy heart,

Keep thy mind focused upon the next brand new start.

Soon ye shall know the answer to a timeless mystery.

You’ll learn all the bedazzling puzzles of human history.

 

Lie comfortably there in bed

And simply release it all out.

That’s what our final moment is really

All about.

Please don’t complicate it

with loud screams

And bitter rages,

Unwind away freely

As you belong to blessed infinity’s ages.

 

Beseech thy forgiveness

And make this moment alright.

Do this for me

As you step off into a melancholy night.

Don’t face the temporal gloom

With this bitterness in your heart,

Your future fate lies solid with each winking star.

No mortal anywhere carries a life chart,

We all are doomed to take this journey

From the very moment we start.

 

Thy mother can’t be there with you

To guide you on your way.

Your father isn’t going to stand around

With any philosophical say.

Your lover can’t be there

To hold either hand,

As you transgress toward infinity's Elysium land.

 

He who made you awaits there

To take you by the arm,

It's simply not his way to yell or

Sound any proclaiming alarm.

Reach out toward him now

While there's still yet plenty of time,

Lest ye be cast out into miserable perpetuity;

With no ears hearing you scream,

Wreathe and groan,

Or pine.

About the author:

H.L. Dowless is an international ESL instructor. More details about the poet can be found here: 

Story Telling (A Poem)

 

                           By Ed Ahern

Oral family history

is of its shifting nature

blotched by secrets:

misrememberings,

overstatements,

embellishments,

and flat out lies.

 

Those who still know

will rarely admit that

their cousin was a suicide;

they really didn’t graduate;

their retreat was a rehab;

their lifestyle is a sham;

their mourning is proforma.

 

The posed family photos

portray emotional proximity

belying everyday indifference.

But perhaps all the lying

unconscious or deliberate

holds a larger truth-

our narrative reality

demands a good story.

About the author: 

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over 450 stories and poems published so far, and ten books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories where he manages a posse of eight review editors, and as lead editor at Scribes Microfiction. His social media handles are as follows: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram 

Baby Bird Bones (A Poem)

 

                     By Jack Cariad Leon

I cry hopelessly to the angels,

as I look for hidden messages everywhere.

Always seeking some hint or

holy sign I should still love you, still care.

 

I want to enter your room, on silky white wings:

I wish that I could truthfully say

that I’ve always been good, oh so good to you.

But I haven’t. I’ve only been ok.

 

I’m a passionate Pagan mess in my Sunday best,

Please, I would beg of the earth itself,

with moss in her hair and her rainforest lungs:

Is there any way that you could help?

Her the wishful goddess, him the wistful godless.

 

But I don’t think it’s too likely so I try to be strong

missing you quite deeply, in fact I’ve

ached for you each and every night, all night long,

my heart as brittle as baby bird bones.

 

Personified feminist disappointment,

I feel like I need myself a man.

I’d try the noble pursuit of being alone,

but, I crave those olive hands.

About the author:

Jack Cariad Leon (he/him) is a transgender writer and visual artist based in Brisbane, Australia. A fan of the avant-garde, he collects dolls and art books of certain genres. He also has a deep interest in the history and lore of flowers. His social media accounts are as follows: jackofallartforms on tumblr, instagram, deviantart. jackofartforms on twitter

Changing (a Short Story)

                        By Matthew Spence

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

 

“People are changing,” Sean’s roommate said.

Sean glanced over at him. Farley was fairly nondescript and would have been difficult to pick out of a crowd or a lineup. If they weren’t roommates Sean probably wouldn’t have remembered him if they’d only met once.

“What do you mean?” Sean asked. “People don’t change; they’ve been the same for thousands of years.”

“I don’t mean psychologically, I mean physically. Haven’t you seen the news?” Farley gestured at the TV, which was currently showing a Netflix series that they both watched. “What I mean is, they’re physically changing.”

“You’ll have to clarify that for me,” Sean replied.

 

Farley switched to CNN. An anchor was talking about a new pandemic, showing a chart involving animals and people.

“And joining us now is Doctor Stillwater from the Centers for Disease Control…doctor, perhaps you can  explain this for our viewers.”

“Of course.” The doctor was a youngish man, but he seemed very authoritative when he spoke. “What’s happening is essentially a rewriting of  human DNA. We share more than 90 per cent of ours with apes, and more than fifty percent with pigs, chickens, mice, and even plants such as bananas. Increased solar radiation seems to have triggered the genes that regulate natural DNA mutations, resulting in cross-species copying, creating a chimera effect. It’s causing people to develop the characteristics of those animals that we share most of our DNA with, a kind of reverse evolution, if you will…”

“People are turning into animals?” Sean asked, muting the sound. The scene on the TV switched over to video of a man who had clearly developed animistic characteristics such as a thick main of feathers. It looked like a costume, but Farley insisted it was real.

“Animals and in some cases plants like the man said. It seems to be spreading.”

Sean stared at the TV. It was the first time he’d really paid attention to the news or anything on TV in a while, usually he had it on with the sound muted or turned down while he was doing something else.

Sean wasn’t quite sure of what to make of it. Life had previously been predictable but mostly calm for him. Now that routine had been upset, and it made him uncomfortable. But was that the point of what he was seeing?

“Is anyone doing anything about it? Aside from talking about it, I mean?”

“Some scientists say they’re working on genetic treatments. Human animal hybrid genes. But people seem scared of trying something like that.”

Sean nodded. “I don’t blame them. All that Frankenstein stuff scares me, too.”

Farley shook his head. “But we shouldn’t be scare of it, should we? Change can be good. There’d  be no progress without it.”

Sean knew that Farley had a point. But how could there be progress if humanity’s genes were taking it backward?

For the next several days there was slow but steady news about the so-called Gene Pandemic. It wasn’t really a virus; it was mutations being caused by the Sun, so people were advised to wear protection against it when they were outdoors and to stay indoors as often as possible. There was a surge in sales of skin lotion and sunglasses that people wore even on cloudy days. But the mutations kept happening-Sean noticed that some of his office co-workers had stopped showing up to work and was told that they’d been changed, into what his manager didn’t seem to know, but they’d developed symptoms of fur and feathers and in at least once case folds of vegetable skin. Now increasingly worried, Sean went to the local clinic, where to his relief he tested negative for any genetic changes. Then, one day after getting home from work, he was informed by the landlord that Farley had disappeared.

“He just walked out and hasn’t been back since,” the landlord said. “I know this sounds cold, but since you both signed the lease, I may have to have him charged with trying to break it, and you might have to find another roommate. I’ll wait until you do, but for your own sake I hope he comes back soon…”

The question of his rent was soon rendered moot, however, as the landlord herself changed a few days later. She became a type of large bird, something that seemed to big to fly, but she did, taking off through her office windows one day and not returning.

All Sean could do now was wait, and wonder. Was Farley all right? Was he happy being an animal now, if he was one? Would Sean himself be happier without him? Farley was part of the “herd” so to speak, so maybe he was better off. Even so, Sean found himself missing his company, while at the same time it was getting harder for him to remember what his former roommate looked like. He felt badly about that. People, even nondescript ones, deserved to be remembered.

Sean found himself sniffing the air. He seemed to be developing an enhanced sense of smell, and could hear things that were obviously further away, outside of normal human hearing range.

He sighed and sat back in his recliner as he turned the TV on. It was still working, so he went over to Netflix to watch the show that he and Farley had both liked. The actors’ voices were becoming harder to understand, but he still liked watching the action.

Farley was becoming increasingly difficult to remember. Sean now had trouble remembering his own name and found himself lying on the floor, covered in fur, having discarded his clothing, but it didn’t seem to matter. He tried to remember what he could, hoping it would be enough. In the meantime, he barked for someone to let him outside so he could go to the bathroom.

About the author: 

Matthew Spence was born in leveland, Ohio. His work has most recently appeared in Tall Tale TV. More details of the author can be found here:

The Ferryman

 

1.

Sandy Valley. A small village at the foothills of a large mountain line in Southeast Asia. It would be a very beautiful place for a romanticized traveler, thanks to its serenity, calmness and the wild lovely flowers all around the windy walkways in the remotest setting off the illusive city life. The festive mood of nature continues from the end of the prolonged winter to the spring with the blooming colors in a jubilant mood. And it is the time when the hardships begin for the poor bread earners still clinging on to the place they were born and brought up in. This is the only place on earth they have ever known of from the stories of their ancestors, from the struggles they take on, from the happy moments they share together, from their hardships and sweats, from the indispensable bond they are tied to nature, from every single breath to taste the life. But the limited living resources could allow only a few hundreds of people to cling on to living with the minimal modern facilities a man would ever expect in the beginning of the 19th century.

 

The ferryman was waiting to kick off his first ride in the dawn. The eastern sky had hardly started lighting the earth with the first rays of the Sun. The river named Sandy was looking a little more rougher today with the incessant sound of flowing waters and breaking waves in a clash with the wind and currents. The passengers grew more worried but the rider looked nonchalant. He knows the turns, depth and the current of the river almost like his own palm. And for the countless number of times he has saved people, mostly kids and women, falling in the water from boats and trapped in the powerful currents. He could swim like a dolphin above the water or under it; amidst the deep current or in the crashing waves. But Madhu was worried too behind his apathetic look for entirely a different reason. The water level of Sandy River this year wasn’t increasing like it normally does during this part of the season. He knows the rhythm and the cycle of the water better than anyone else and anything else around him. He has witnessed the slow changes of its course, forcing people living near the bank to relocate. He has witnessed the river in its devastating mood, flooding the entire village which would eventually help the lands to grow more fertile and the landlords to reserve water for irrigation. But, there must be something wrong with the river this year. The clouds are not staying longer and the monsoon rains are not lasting longer either.

 

2.

The ferryman is known to all as Madhu, a shortened one from Madhushanka, without any middle or surname. He could hardly remember the time since when he started ferrying people to cross the river as the helper to his mentor and guardian who once provided shelter to a drifting kid and eventually started treating him like his own son. With his mentor, who he called papa, having passed away, he shouldered the responsibility of both the boat and the river which becomes nearly non-existent during the dry season with little or no water at all. But the scenario gets changed dramatically at the beginning of the long awaited monsoon. The darkening clouds engulfing the entire village and the chimes of sad gloomy sky bring back hopes and dreams to the villagers. The small river with the minimal flow suddenly becomes wild, windy and wavy and impassable without the expertise of a highly skilled rider like that of Madhu. And it’s the season when the rider becomes busy all through the day and night. And this is the season the villagers become busy with their own livelihoods: the farmers, the day-laborers, the fisherman and a couple of masons and carpenters all come out together off their naturally enforced long vacation. This is the season when the villagers start ploughing their fertile lands whose fertility entirely depends on the rains and the sediments distributed by the overflowing river.

 

Madhu worships the Sandy River as the only goddess he feels deep down his heart. The river was the closest companion in his troubled childhood days. The river is now the only means of his livelihood and he just can’t imagine of any other way to earn. When the river gets dried and the reasons to cross the knee deep water level get even more drier, he still keeps coming to his small boat tied to a tall tree on the bank. He spends hours watching people crossing the river on foot or the fishermen trying hard to catch fishes in the near dead flow of water.

 

In all these years Madhu has garnered the trust of the villagers who depend on each other for their respective livelihoods. People need to cross the river to get to the huge hut on the other side of the river, near the age-old railway station with only one train still keeping the locality alive to the other part of the world. But, the fresh vegetables, milk, butter, honey and other crops are the other things that make traders commute to this hut. And sometimes the vendors themselves cross the river for gaining the better margin, risking a little of their lives on the river; banking a huge trust onto the ferryman.  

 

The entire economic activities of Sandy Valley center around a few landlords of the village. While amassing their wealth with every passing year, they create the maximum job resources for the day laborers and other people in general and they have got their own houseboats, locally known as bojras, to make their precious lives more secured on the wild river. They often cross the river to catch up with the train to meet their relatives in the town. Life gives them the luxury to live a dual life: one in the village with the countrymen and with the hardships attuning to nature and the other is somehow like a vacation home in the town to spend the dry season.  They have got their kids educated in the town though, who, just like the opposite, spend their study breaks in the village. And ironical enough, Madhu’s little luxury depends on those kids and their pleasure trips on the river. When someone among them accidentally fall off their houseboats, and which happens regularly, Madhu instantaneously jumps off his boat and save them from being drowned in the helical flow or rip currents. And in such cases the tips from the landlords are always good.

 

3.

Apart from the river, the only other entity Madhu ever cares for is his wife, Banalota, whom he lovingly calls Buno. The affluent villagers or the traders making good profits would often give him good tips. And on such a day he would always think of two things: buying some jewelry like ear rings, nose pins or whatever fancy items were available in the hut near the station and drinking a whole bottle of a locally brewed cheap ram before getting back home. Other than riding the boat and swimming in the river, his entire life was dependent on his wife, be it the financial affairs, managing fresh vegetables or other everyday essentials like storing crops for the dry season. She never scolds him for being so late or for his occasional drinking habit but for being so bold to brave the wildness of the fuming river and so reckless to dive deep into the current so as to save the drowning people. But he is always ready with his smile and his answer: the river is his mother and a mother can’t kill his own child. She keeps waiting without having dinner for his husband to come home and it also hurts her to serve the food cold. Madhu never minds having a cold meal, though. Furthermore, he loves the way his beloved wife scolds him. He thinks himself a really lucky person to have such a beautiful, lovely and caring wife, who had to give up her gypsy life and her River Gypsy family to settle down with Madhu.

 

As Madhu was afraid of, the river was behaving differently this season. Instead of overflowing the banks, the water level started decreasing. The monsoon had somehow got derailed without triggering sufficient rain everyone was waiting for. And a village entirely dependent on one crop season after the monsoon rain finds it really hard to believe. They can’t remember such an instance to have ever happened to a place under the lap of nature with all its blessings for the people who never demanded too much from life.

The prolonged dry season after just a short break resumed. The villagers, most of them belonging to the working class, found it hard to cope up without jobs in the farming lands. The helps from the landlords began to drain out. The bond among the villagers began to fall apart. The common woes appeared to hit the clans in different ways. And the age old stories of famine started to cause panic among the people. With the small savings dried out and without the options left to seek help, the families began to flee in the darkness into an abyss of uncertainty, leaving behind their moments of joy, sorrows, hopes and beliefs and probably their souls deeply attached to the place. The melancholic tune started dominating the entire community with the increasing emptiness in the literal sense with the increasing number of abandoned homes every single morning.

 

4.

Days kept passing by without bringing any change to the fate of the people. The number of people had been reduced to half now.

 

Madhu never thought of leaving the river, and the small home close to its bank. But his wife, Buno, finally somehow managed to persuade him to leave their loving home and try their luck somewhere else like the other villagers. The stock of flattened rice and puffed rice has been reduced to the bottom layer even after extreme rationing. The stock of rice is nearly finished too. They took their minimal belongings and the rest of the dried food in a small bag with the diminishing hope of coming back home again. But the current priority is to manage somehow some job to be able to buy at least a square meal a day anywhere far or farther.

 

They left home in a shattered mind and in silence with tears rolling down their faces. In all these years they have lived so far, they never set themselves apart from their motherly river. Nor could they do it now. Instead of crossing the river to catch up with the trail to the town, they kept walking along the river with the hope of a better locality somewhere down there. 

 

Their village is naturally bordered by the small hills on two sides and a jungle on the West and the other one being covered by the river line. They choose the Western way where the river line meets the long forest. They kept passing through the muddy ways along the river bank like flowing on in an infinite silence without any trace of locality. The hilly tracks full of small bushes on the infertile soils keep acres of land uninhabited by the people solely dependent on agriculture. There are a few families who would go deep into the forest to collect honey in groups, but that was seasonal too. And they too never live anywhere near the forest line, though no species of ferocious animals was heard to be seen in the woods full of sal trees.

Their progress towards the uncertain destination was getting slower with every passing hour in nearly unfed stomachs. There was the source of water all along the way as the river was still flowing like a rivulet. But the dry foods can hardly provide the energy to walk through the untrodden ways full of downward slopes and small hills. Green coconuts or ripen guavas or sometimes bananas from the naturally grown trees helped them a lot on their painstaking journey. But these sorts of natural sources were getting lighter too as they were getting closer to the forest line.

 

After two days of laborious journey on foot with little rest and diminishing hope, Madhu was lying prostrate under a tree, looking at nowhere in a blank pair of eyes, thinking how his beautiful world was shattering into pieces. The logic wanted him to change the course and cross the river to get somewhere near the town like many other migrants. It was just before twilight when his eyes suddenly fell onto a long line of ants desperately moving in a row.  And his eyes got wet with the glow of a suddenly rekindled hope. Living all these years near water, studying nature, the movement of airs, the humidity and the heat of the Sun, the movement of the birds and clouds and the sky all through his life from childhood, he knows it’s the time. He immediately sprang up and asked his wife to get ready for the journey back home. Though a little confused at first, Buno didn’t argue with his husband as she knew very well what his husband was made of. If he thinks that the rain is coming back, it will definitely come in full vigor. Within hours there were chimes all along the sky with shrouding heavy clouds all above them. And then the downpour begins. 

 

5.

It took them less than a day to get back home amidst incessant rain. The river was already swelling up with wild roars while flowing like thousands of wild horses in a race. It was just the afternoon with the shadow of the night all set to sweep over the gloomy sky. Without taking any rest and wasting any time, Madhu left home to do a little repairing job of the boat, promising the worried Buno to return home in just an hour. The entire atmosphere of the village seemed to have changed in just three days. The torrential rain along with the lightning, the frightening and howling sound of the wind like that of a nor’wester, and the dangerous and all-engulfing look of the river were ringing the bell to declare an upcoming disaster. Madhu’s home was the nearest one from the river which was already flowing above the bank with millions of tons of water joining in.

Madhu was nearly running to get back home, sensing the flash flood. But the water level rising above his knee in just minutes forced him to swim back home for half a mile. He was so concerned about his wife alone in the home due to the screams of people from the neighboring homes. Many other people like them seemed to have come back home but may be just to face the far graver danger. They were searching for their dear ones yet to get back home. By the time Madhu reached home, the water level had reached almost waist high and Buno was standing on their bed which had gone under water. Both of them felt really relieved to see each other safe. But just for a moment. Suddenly a scream of a woman asking for help for her drowning child made Madhu take a reflex action like he used to do for drowning people in the river. He swam towards the sound like a sailfish while scanning the water covered area in the dwindling light from the sinking Sun. And the kid was lucky this time. Madhu brought him back to the tearful mother and swam back home at the same speed. Swimming can hardly make him tired.

 

The water level was still rising without giving any hint to go down soon. So Madhu decided to leave home yet again for the second time in three days. He took Buno on his back and asked her to hold him tight. He was planning to cross the drowned area to take shelter on the hilly parts of the village, nearly one kilometer off his home. But it was quite difficult to swim towards the right direction. In the already darkened afternoon the water logged land was hard to differentiate from the actual river. But Madhu is a water guy with full sense of the depth and current and obviously the courage. Swimming for hours has never been a problem for him. Even while carrying someone on his back. He was smoothly moving towards the light from the houses of the landlords. They live on the upper side of the village.

 

But there is one thing like helical flow in the calm looking surface and Madhu somehow fell into one in darkness and suddenly felt an enormous power pulling him deep down the water. He felt like something was fastening him tightly to a rope, draining out all his energy. He was pulled back into the main flow of the river and into a rip current which was still tying him tightly to keep him into the spiraling flow down the surface. And suddenly with the oxygen level going down to zero his lung was striving hard for the open air; his back felt so heavy. Buno was holding her throats more strongly under the water and he immediately started struggling to free himself from the weighing burden falling heavier every single second. Fresh air was all he was looking for. With a last attempt to breathe he put together all his energy and squeezed the throat of the burden real hard. In a few seconds the burden loosened and he set himself free from the current to float above the surface.

 

He was getting back to his senses with a few long breaths in the open air. Amidst darkness, and water and the waves he started feeling life once again after the near-death experience for the first in his life and still it was in the water where he feels the most comfortable. But with more oxygen flowing in his veins and the brain, he started feeling one more thing; a salty taste of tears rolling down his eyes. He started realizing what he had done. Without thinking anything else and with a prolonged sigh of disbelief and a blurred out groan, he finally surrendered himself to his river mother and to the flow of the deep current and started searching desperately for something he always thought more valuable to him than his own life. Under the dark deep water he was losing the last light of his conscience with the last ray of hope getting dimmer. The last thing he could remember was the feel of a cloth in his quivering fingers of the right hand.

 

Hours went by and the all engulfing darkness was getting weakened with a soft light emerging on the eastern sky. The flash flood was gone along with the howling winds and the roaring waves. The river was calm and so was the weather. And so were two bodies on the boat of Madhu: still breathing.

(The story is written in the shadow of Bengali short story entitled “Tarinee Majhi”, by prominent Bengali novelist Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay.)

 

©Atique R.