Archive for the ‘Trent Walters’ Category
His Final Quest
Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
Between densely gnarled groves, the ruins of Castle Noland rose on Spindle Mountain against the late sun like a needle one cannot spot in the grass unless the light catches it or he treads upon it. The mountain, though stunted, was steep and crumbled in Yul’s hands–a miracle it had lasted. It would not bar him from his lost father.
Castle Noland lacked drawbridges and doors, so Yul made one, knocking down bricks, some of which decomposed to powder. Sunlight streamed through the roof and holes in the mortar, illuminating dust motes. One beam shone on a white-bearded, white-robed old man stooped atop his throne: like God after the sixth day. The beam moved, and the old man regressed into shadow.
Was this the same man who sent the child Yul on quests: Track the Amethyst of Memory to the caves of Kaldan, wrestle the Ruby of No Regrets from the King of Cobramen, hunt down the Cape of No Tomorrows through the thorny jungles of Afterwine?
Yul had never put his mind to quests. He’d set out but–heavy-hearted–stopped to rest on a stump. Days passed like a clock’s pendulum. Soon hunger roused his head, and he’d slink home.
Yet Yul fetched the Ruby of No Regrets by trading plastic beads he’d dubbed the Necklace of Deathless Dawns: “Death ignored you if you gripped the necklace righteously.” True, it would fail the Cobramen, but had they held it right?
The Ruby had never ceded Yul the confidence needed to begin his own life. Instead, Yul had worried over quests his father shipped him on. Late in his third dodecade, he, still questing, paused at a village where the Miller’s daughter drew well water. When asked for a draft, she gave without reservation.
Twelve dodecades later, he’s returned, to bring Father to a new home among sheep and grapevines. Yul stood beside the old man whose white contrasted with the gleaming ruby ring lolling on his right, wrinkled hand.
“Hello?” The old man leaned forward, milky white eyes scanning the room. “That you, Spot? I’ve a doggy biscuit.”
Yul gritted his teeth.
“I shouldn’t have let you go.” That last word was a sob.
Yul wanted to shake the man, ask if a lost dog was all he regretted.
The old man’s body shook violently. His ribs rippled beneath robes, coming and going. “I loved you like a son.”
Yul wrapped his arms around his father, shushing and humming a lullaby.
Between Them
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
“Most ghosts, when all is said and done, do not do much harm.”–E.F. Benson, “Caterpillars”
She liked NASCAR via surround-sound speakers: the rev and whine of engines rattling the china cupboards in their little Italian villa, echoing across the hillside village. He liked gaudily colored knick-knacks–doilies, ceramic dolls, figurines of farmers and barnyard animals. These held them together because these kept away the ghosts.
It hadn’t always been this way. Ambitious young sculptors, they attended University of Texas during the “DotCom” bubble. They squirreled enough to sculpt the rest of their lives in Italy, eying villas outside Rome where they’d haunt great works of art on a whim–especially the Italian Renaissance, which they felt they had a foolproof plan to reinvigorate. All they need do was invest aggressively for ten years, and they’d live happily ever after.
In ten years, the housing bubble banqueted upon their savings. Enough remained to redeem for a remote Italian villa, far from Rome. “Villa” was too kind: gargoyles falling off the rooftop at the hint of wind, a battered if tasteless cupid water fountain, moth-eaten draperies, decrepit furnishings–a haven for wandering ghosts.
Into these quarters, ghosts slipped in and tipped over alabaster sculptures or knocked the half-formed granite gulls from a windowsill–how had it gotten there?–or whatever the couple had been working on. Critics, no doubt. The car noises and atrocious crafts warded away most ghosts, but not altogether.
The villa’s decay and their art’s attrition infected waning late-night caresses. They cohabited together alone, in separate bedrooms among the rubble of their sculptures.
One night leaning out on the veranda, smoking a cigarette and sipping smokey whiskey, he spotted something below, glowing in the water-fountain’s basin. He fetched and cradled the foot-long grub into the light of his wife’s bedroom. A ghost banging a shutter caught sight of the creature and fled.
He laid the grub upon the sheets between them. Water slicked its satiny carapaced belly. His wife cooed, stroked its abdomen which squished and sloshed as though it held a chunky, viscous liquid. Its pincers squeezed his finger hard enough to tickle out a trickle of blood. He babbled in a prehistoric tongue.
She laid a hand on his cheek, brushed his forehead with the backs of her knuckles. She thought of days soaking up the sun on Padre Island, of blueberry sno-cones and beignés, of ridiculously floppy straw hats, of his warmth next to hers. He spirited her hand to his lips and kissed the open palm.