The Journey (a fictional tale)

The Journey
by: Paul McNees

Part I.
Thurston picked up his satchel and moved on. He had grown tired of the sounds of crickets and birds. But… Perhaps one more stop. Yes, here in this small thicket. The woods had grown extremely thick and dark (quite unlike his small florescent cubicle back in the city). Even though it was only mid-day he could feel the pressing presence of nighttime all around him. He glanced at his watch, yes, only mid-day. He gently set down his satchel upon a patch of moss and hid himself in the small thicket.
A small tunnel had formed at one end, which he only had to bend slightly at the hips to move his body through. He turned around and glanced back to whence he had come. His satchel sat cold and lonely, possibly shivering slightly, upon the small patch of moss. Thurston was suddenly filled with a deep sense of sorrow and pity at the sight of such a sad spectacle. It brought to mind a bitter memory, which he had lovingly stored away for future vindictiveness against some foe unawares.

File cabinet B: in all likelihood stored under T for Trauma. Subset C: childhood trauma.

Camera focuses on satchel. Move to extreme close-up. Satchel fills the screen. Camera fades back revealing braided rug, fine antique furniture. The pacifying sounds of ticking clocks swells but something overrides: Mother taunting child.

“Well if you’re gonna go, go!”
“Mamma I don’t really wanna go! I don’t wanna run away!”
“C’mon let’s go pack a bag for you…Let’s see, you’ll need socks, underwear…”
“Momma!”
Child is throwing articles out of the satchel as fast as Momma can pack them. Momma wins out. Bag is packed and Momma takes child by the hand and leads him to the front door.
“Momma!”
Child is in hysterics.
Door opens.
“Momma, NO!”
Satchel is set out on a dimly lit porch. Child is shoved out after it.
“Give us a call when you get settled in, OK?”
Momma closes door. Child begins to whimper.

Camera closes in on satchel. Fade to file cabinet where Childhood Trauma #106 is confidently stored away. File drawer is closed and Thurston peers out through a tangle of branches.

He feels safe in here. That ever-comforting womb-like appeal. He knows, however, as he did even then in progressive fetal stages, that he cannot stay in here forever. His satchel is waiting patiently for him as he exits the thicket. Thurston doesn’t think it was really afraid. He doesn’t believe that inanimate objects are capable of deep feelings such as fear. Fear is an emotion far too complex for a satchel. Yet he lifted it and cradled it in his arms like a newborn infant. Just like Momma held him when he was a little boy. Especially after Daddy had just beat him with the switch for being bad. That was when Momma held him the tightest. She would hold him until the bleeding on the backs of his legs stopped. It would always take a few days though for the welts to go away.
Thurston stood at the edge of the thicket and gazed down at the path he had chosen to follow. He rested his chin on his newborn satchel. That path was teeming with life. He could hear it and feel it. So much different from the city. The city did not contain so much life as much as it did just movement. Just people bustling here and there, to and fro. Carrying their little file cabinets in their heads. Their handy storage bins. Thurston grinned. When he grinned, his cheeks dimpled. He didn’t care to remember how many times in his 29 years someone had stuck a finger in those dimples. Uncle Tom had to have been the most frequent offender. Uncle
Tom always came to the house bearing gifts and laughter. The gift was usually liquor and the laughter – slightly hysterical. A certain look resided in his eyes that revealed something other than sanity. His brackish hysterics could turn to violent anger in the blink of an eye. And he always had his finger in Thurston’s dimple. Even when Uncle Tom molested Thurston, he commented about his dimples. “Don’t frown, Thursty!” he would say, and he would kiss Thurston’s little lips and fondle Thurston’s penis and buttox. Then Thurston would have to do the same thing to Uncle Tom until Uncle Tom would squirt his pearly white jism all over Thurston’s hand.
The thicket was behind him now.



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I am Thurston’s father. Call me Leamish. My first name is of Armenian descent on my mother’s side. A grandmother of mine was raped, beaten and taken as a slave during the wars with the Turks. Her name, too, was Leamish. She was bought again by a wealthy English sailor who eventually fell in love with and married her. He became my grandfather. When I was a child I went by the name of Lee because of the embarrassment my female name caused me. I have raised my son, Thurston. as best I could. I gave him a man’s name.

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Part II.

Mid-day broke unevenly into evening and, reaching his destination from a slightly circuitous route, Thurston knocked humbly upon the rotting wooden door. The woman, Thurston’s mother (aged, pathetic, rasping from years of cigarette aggravated emphysema) cautiously squeaked open the door and extended her withered arms in a declined invitation for a hug. Thurston had found this to be the best method for establishing the power structure immediately. Momma’s eyes swum in her head like opaque bubbles stuck in some peculiar, quite uninhabitable surroundings.
“You’re late”, she said – before hello, before how-have-you-been.
Power structure shifts.
Thurston recovers.
“Your expectations about my time of arrival were skewed mother. Not unlike the many other bizarre perceptions of your surroundings.”
Never give excuses. Always shift blame. Rule of power maintenance #1.
Silence.
Thurston peruses the room.
Mother: So how have you been?
Power remains stable
Thurston: Fine mother, fine. Missed you at the funeral.
Mother: Has that happened already? Note of surprise in voice, sardonic.
Thurston: Well…he died last week you know. We had to get him buried sometime now, didn’t we? We didn’t want him to just lie around and decompose. That would lack a certain nobility that I think he rather deserved.
Mother: Oh yes! Suicide is a terribly noble method of bringing a close to one’s life isn’t it. There is no question mark .
Thurston: Well it certainly ranks far above slowly rotting away in some stinking hovel out in the middle of nowhere with the sole purpose of providing one more disruptive odor to this already rather pungent world. All this said with the greatest calm and forced eye contact.

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I am Thurston’s father. Call me Ichabod. My mother was a prostitute, my father a sharecropper in eastern Prague. Both moved to England in 1945 at the end of the Great War. Five girls were born preceding myself. My mother died in childbirth whilst bringing me into the world. This saddens me. Afflicted with sclerosis of the liver and bad teeth, my father fled to the city to live the rest of his meager days in the accompaniment of other alcoholics and general failures. This also saddens me. I was raised by my oldest sister, who is, to this day unmarried. She sacrificed her life and her beauty for five waif siblings. This saddens me most of all. When I met Thurston’s mother, she was a seamstress in a clothing factory. She was a pitiable creature. I took her away from all that.

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Part III.

Leaving Momma standing, tears welling, autistic rocking, hands wringing. Walking into yard, down cellar steps. Dead leaves crunching underfoot.
Momma knitting death shawl.
(Still, those indefatigable traditions…Keeping the magic alive.)
Old door creaking open on hinges rusted, disintegrating.
Only the ghosts know the secrets of this cellar’s darkness.
Thurston thinking, “Bring back the sun. God damn the sun.”
The sun’s infinite pouring light only reminds him of this cellar’s darkness. It’s light spilling onto stairs with each step a little darker.
Momma blinded by tears – moving – sadness settling on the dusty furniture mingling uneasily with the anger.

Thurston’s satchel lying untended.

Thurston hoping to find an abatement of anger in this dark, moist cavern. He only finds fear. Standing for a moment he peers about him. Nothing. There is nothing here. Just rotting memories. Those memories that grow and change with our experience. The entropy is diffident. It can only transform. He knows he cannot find his answers here. The answers to his hatred – his hatred mingled with love and blindness. He lets his shoulders relax.

He
blows out
a breath
of air
as if
to
pollinate
the wind
with
his
troubled
soul.

He is in the bowels of his mother’s home. Swallowed. She marches around upstairs. He can hear her weeping. Her vile weeping. Her salty tears falling on the dusty hardwood floor. Liquid pain. If she died, would his burden be lifted? Would the cord be finally cut? Would he leave this house once and for all, not turning ‘round to see it diminishing in the shadows cast by trees?
Or would he carry
this pain to his grave,
once more covered by
the thickening leaves.



The sun had found the mouth of the cavern as it always did at this time of day. Thurston was annoyed by its peaceful consistency. It poured in its golden light displaced here and there by the dust stirred up by Thurston’s presence here. As he moved toward the light the dust parted before him. This was not the belly of the whale, Thurston thought. Nothing has changed. I am not closer to God.

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I am Thurston’s father. I am not known by any name. My mother was made of light and my father was made of stone. My rape came on the wind of an icy night in February. The night Thurston was born, the leaves fell from the trees and covered the ground in a tapestry of fire. The next day, the light shone brightly by the world was frozen on its axis. Thurston cried. For a fortnight he cried, unceasingly, filling his cradle with tears thick like the embryonic fluid that still dripped through the cracks of the floor beneath him.
His satchel had already been packed and stood patiently by his bed as Thurston lay floating peacefully in his own salty tears.
No photographs were taken of his childhood. No memories preserved. Though I was always there he never knew me.

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Part IV.

As Thurston appeared in the doorway to the living room, his mother was circling his satchel making a harsh, grating noise with her chaffed wrinkled hands – wringing them as if to rid herself of some nefarious residue.

“Stop that!”, Thurston cried and again more softly, “stop that.”

She stopped and stared at him like a scolded yet defiant dog. She was silent.
Thurston came toward her but they were divided by his satchel, which sat confidently upon the floor between them.
The light was beautiful now. Golden, soft. But it more angrily displayed the filth inside Momma’s unkempt little hovel.
Thurston reached forward with his right foot and slowly scooted the satchel aside until nothing divided him and his mother but internal walls. He reached out and took hold of his mother’s dry hands. They were much softer than he expected. He looked up into his mother’s face, which held interchangeably, fear and great sadness. He slowly brought her hands to his lips and gently kissed them. He rested his cheek for a moment on her trembling fingers and with infinite slowness released them. Without again looking up, he reached for his satchel and followed the sun’s rays toward the door. The dust floated like stars in the stillness. Momma stood and stared at the soft imprint of Thurston’s satchel in the dust. She returned to her knitting.

The door creaked and then was silenced by a soft



click.




Once outside


Thurston


breathed deeply the quickly cooling air.

The night awaited


him but he




knew his


way


well.