Thirty More Stories

"Tillie? Aunt Tillie?" I forced myself into the heat, my brain suddenly churning with the thought that the house was in danger. I saw Tillie in her chair, the overstuffed Georgian armchair she had brought from Cambridge long ago. She seemed asleep...No, she seemed...frozen.

  "Tillie!" I almost ran to her, then skidded to a panicky stop. She was...ablaze. Searing blue flames were flickering over her skin, leaping from her gray-blue hair, her skin crackling as I watched. The blistering heat pushed me away, forced me back as Tillie started to darken and...melt. I watched, horrified, then--fascinated--as her body shrunk, then collapsed in on itself. The ferocious heat continued for an hour, then slowly faded as the body became a large cinder, then ashes. Not much was left: one of her shoes with a blackened bone poking out of it and two fingers on her left hand as pristine as life. The rest of Aunt Tillie would fit--did fir--in a small urn.

  Five days later, I sat on my bed, reading the copy of Aunt Tillie's will for the nineteenth time. One clause anchored my eyes: "The bulk of my estate will pass to my nephew Reginald when and only when he establishes a personal income of at least $30,000 a year for at least two consecutive years. Until that time, it will remain under the trust of Jonathan Granger, Esquire." No house, no money, no life until I earned a living..

  At what? I have never worked, never tried to find a job, never learned a trade or even wanted to. All I could think of doing was becoming a companion to some old fart so long as said old fart didn't need anything more than a TV companion. I would receive $60 a week, stay in the house rent-free and receive the usual groceries from Furman's until the day I died.

  Three weeks passed. I invited Granger the Esquire over to watch the cop drama he loved as much as Aunt Tillie. Pushing 80, Granger still cut a dapper figure that made me feel old and useless. I let him in and waved him to a chair.

  "Isn't that Tillie's chair?" he asked, a quaver in his voice.

  "No," I lied, "It was part of a set and I kept the other one to remember her by."

  He sat down gingerly. "She was a fine woman. We miss her, don't we?"

  I nodded as I thought again that Granger would not burn like Aunt Tillie did, but he would end up as my second--and last--victim in the only thing I found I could really do well.

  THE DUKE BATTLES

  “Sire? My pardons, Sire. There’s… ” The burly guard seemed to shrink upon himself.

  The Duke shifted upon his horse, the starving beast almost staggering under the meager load. “Out with it, man!”

  The guard drew himself up, his face a mask of resolve to do and die. “There’s an old woman out there challenging us to fight…her.”

  The Duke’s jaw dropped and he cursed himself inwardly for so blatant a display. He made sure his tone was level. “Lead me to her.” He was gratified to note that the guard was taken aback by such a measured response. In consideration of the steed and its possible future as food, the Duke dismounted and followed the guard, whose steps kept speeding up. At the city wall, the guard allowed the Duke to climb the rough wood ladder first, then followed with alacrity.

  “Where is this old woman?” The Duke was proud that his tone was still level.

  “I’m righ’ here, ya daft turnip head!” screeched a voice from below and outside the wall. The Duke reacted visibly, but was so stunned by the screech that he forgot to curse inwardly and leaned over the parapet. The old woman was staring up at him, her wizened face a map of wrinkles and bumps, her mouth a near-toothless gash, her sparse gray hair tucked madly into a boiled leather helmet far too large for her tiny head. Upon her withered breast she wore chain mail that was old when the Duke’s grandsire was a boy. The old woman held a sword--a broadsword no less!--that may have weighed about half as much as she did. Ye gods! She even had a shield!

  The Duke turned to the guard and cared not a whit that his voice shook. “How long has she been there?”

  The guard nodded. “Less than an hour, Sire. She appeared just as ye see her.”

  “Appeared?”

  The guard swallowed hard. “This is not my station. Sire.”

  The Duke grunted, but his retort faded with another screech. “Well are ye goin’ ta fight me or do I ha’ to call ye a craven coward?” As he peered over he was stunned, if not appalled to see the old crone waving the heavy sword, or at least trying to, since the blasted thing didn’t seem to rise any higher than her splayed knees. The Duke moaned. He could hear the beginnings of titters amongst the men, discreetly tucked into farther sections of the wall. In another five minutes the whole city would know about the crazy crone at the gate and the Duke would have to do something. He hated having to do something.

  “Hey, Duke! Ya deaf?” The Duke grimaced as titters became giggles. He turned to give the guard an order and caught the broad grin, too slowly hidden. He marked the man for dungeon duty as he ordered “Go out there and drag her in here. Now!”

  The guard hesitated. “Sire. We dare not open the gates, for the woman may be a decoy.” The Duke’s eyes narrowed and he bit back asking how badly the watch had done its sacred duty.

  “Go down by rope and send her away.” With a muttered As ye wish, Sire, the guard went down the ladder, giving the Duke a chance to look at the crone again. Laughter, mocking laughter, bubbled from below and in an instant, the Duke cast a rope over the wall and slid down, proud of still having such skill. At the bottom, he dropped heavily and strode over to the crone.

  “Ye’re a wee man, ye are,” said the old woman, whose face was quite upsetting when she smiled. “Before we fight, I must tell ye a secret…” She crooked a bony finger and with a small sigh, the Duke leaned forward.

  “Ye left ye’re sword, ya daft turnip head,” said the old woman as she sliced through the Duke’s throat with a slim dagger.

  As he fell, the Duke heard the laughter, the very loud open laughter, that echoed around him as he died.

  LETTERS

  The first letter sped across the intervening space, tucked within canvas, the very day after they'd met. Its response, perfumed ever so lightly with lavender, criss-crossed the county and arrived into eager hands. Words, tender and fragile as soap bubbles, were being shared.

  Letters then flew and rode and were carted like butterflies on a gentle breeze, filling the summer days with yearnings and sighs, with new memories, new hopes and new fears of being forgotten. Fall went from butterflies to equally-colorful leaves, letters now probing and confiding, seeking deeper into the illusion for the reality of souls matched in the heavens.

  The chills of winter blanketed the increasing ardor, wrapping it in the glow of its own contentment, incapable of dampening Love's flame. The eruption of Spring multiplied the letters, which then multiplied again into gilt-edged formal cards requesting a response s'il vous plait.

  For a while, the letters ceased, but a distant war and a call to honor made the letters fly, sail and truck to lands filled with the hateful violence of inhumanity. Fears and the frequent touches of despair, even thoughts of death and tear-stained lines weighed the letters with realities best left unmet. A bootie, pink-edged, made one letter bulge and two hearts squeeze with the dread possibility of hopes and lives dashed forever.

  But then letters, stiff, starched, serious soldierly letters said the time had come for the other letters to become unneeded and a flurry of letters, now tear-stained with joy, flew and raced to share the news, the plans, the changes and the future so bright and clear.

  No letters for a few years, until a step up the proverbial corporate ladder made the letters reappear, from points north, south, east and west, all radiating inward and outward from a tiny hamlet that to one person was a universe and to the other an anchor that demanded to be raised. Questions became demands and accusations, words going past each other without regard to each other, speaking to themselves, hearing nothing but their own angst. The letters dwindled to postcards with perfunctory details, then one day, they stopped.

  A few months later, one large letter, papers folded over carelessly, wrap
ping within them the words that signaled the end of any more letters, of any more words between these two. The papers, minus a few pages, were returned swiftly, slashingly, finally.

  Four months passed.

  A tiny letter, scrawled with crayon and kisses, made its journey. Held in trembling hands for an hour, receiving a drop of plumbed sadness before resting on a sleeping chest. Its response delighted tiny hands, and then every day, sometimes twice a day, crayon, pencil and even watercolor, like butterflies new to flight, wended their path across a landscape changed: the hamlet that felt like an anchor now seemed like a world, one that gave a soul purpose.

  A small letter reached out, not to tiny hands, but to a tiny hope that maybe, just maybe, a spark burned where once a fire kindled. For days...nothing. Then, from words, from many words, from what could have once been too many words, but were now not enough, the answer whispered like a wave...maybe.

  More words, many more words than were ever used, flowed from a heart torn by its own failings. Words of apology amidst lines of regret and sorrow, words that recognized that the shared had been so much more than the perceived, that what the heart had was so much more than what the eyes could have ever seen. The folly of blindness mixed with yearnings and sighs, with memories and hopes and fears of being forgotten, the passion of long ago barely restrained by the most powerful new hope.

  Its response, perfumed ever so lightly with lavender, criss-crossed the land and arrived to eager, tearful hands that, it now said, would never need to receive another letter again.

  ART OF LIFE

  Bartholomew had started, as most children do, with little jars of greasy paint and his fingers, dabbing smeared streaks on any piece of paper he could find. His grandma Mamsy bought him a watercolor set when he was 4 and taught him the soft joy of mixing water with powder and shaping figures with light brushstrokes.

  At seven he dropped paint to use wax crayons, the artsy kind, and soft charcoal pencils. He drew incessantly, between games and classes, at home in front of the loud TV set and at Mamsy’s house, his favorite place in the world, where the light streamed through the kitchen and bedroom windows at just the right angle and intensity to make all his drawings shine.

  He dropped crayons and pencils for calligraphic pens, a set Mamsy had rescued from the attic on her last rickety trip up into the musty dark. The he moved on to oil paints, the kind that came in stiff tubes, with a texture almost like clay. For a summer, he converted Mamsy’s small garage into a sculpting studio, where he tried everything from throwing pottery to smelting, with the end result of burning down a garage wall. Mamsy had chuckled and together they rebuilt the wall with lumber, bricks and cement, a job he considered his best artwork until then.

  At 14 he began drawing with pencil, ink and oil paints combined, his mind filled with nubile maidens, gargoyles and fast cars. That spring, for his 15th birthday, he decided he would sign all his works as “Abelard” and Mamsy bought him a bracelet with that name engraved, saying to him in her smoke-harsh voice “Call yourself what you wish; paint what your heart desires.”

  Not a week later Mamsy died of a stroke. And Abelard started painting from the heart.

  Over seventeen years, Abelard went from school topic to community celebrity to art world sensation. His paintings, painstakingly developed in levels of pencil shades, delineated with ink and then layered with delicate pastels and bright oils rose from the underground of near-anonymity to become spotlight dwellers in museums and galleries around the world. Abelard’s first painting, a delicate nymph romping nude towards a towering oak, sold for $16. His latest, titled “Inhumanity Chained” was a triptych covering over 360 square feet, with almost 300 hundred figures painted in exquisite realism, no two looking alike, chaining a hideous beast emerging from iconic landmarks that spanned the globe. That one had just sold for $17 million, a near-record for a living artist. And the media ate it up, 24/7, in every time zone.

  The grand lobby was wall to wall with people, glitzy and loud, dripping in jewelry, dryly sipping booze from Waterford goblets. Black and red dominated the landscape, with the occasional turquoise, fuchsia and even pea green tossed in as counterpoint. Several of the art world’s most celebrated critics had set aside personal grudges dating back decades to come together in Abelard’s presence.

  The man of the hour hung back, his back against a column, his hands nursing a small goblet of something red. He had counted the crowd, 231, and the ones who stepped in front of “Inhumanity Chained," 16 so far. Of these, only one woman, her dress lacking glitz, her hair a single natural shade of dark brown, her bag clearly lacking a known name, caught his eye. She stared at each panel of the triptych, her eyes never wavering even when jostled by loud tuxedos and shrill cocktail dresses. By the third panel, she had opened the bag, extracted a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes repeatedly, her lone contemplation wrapped in the mist of tears.

  Abelard reached into his pocket and pulled out the certified check that guaranteed his future. He looked at the woman again, standing now alongside the painting, her eyes still wet and locked intently on Abelard’s metaphorical scene.

  With a quick turn, Abelard endorsed the check, walked over to the teary-eyed woman and handing her the check said “Make the change your heart tells you is most needed.” Then, removing the bracelet and dropping it and the goblet in the punch bowl, Abelard--no, Bartholemew--made his way through the crowd and into the night, pondering the quickest route back to Mamsy’s garage.

  FENCING, NOT BOXING

  Sparse, whippet-thin, black hair worn unfashionably long and unwigged, steel-gray eyes above an aquiline nose slightly bent high on the bridge. Living alone at the outskirts of London, a morning's easy trot from the nefarious Tower, just past the rolling meadows where old King John camped in the fortnight's rain.

  Sir John Roberson--declined Lordship in 1824 because he said he had no time for anything related to a Lord--spent many of his days reading, writing letters and exploring the habits of his fellow Englishmen and some of the women. Abstemious in drink and food, he was a notorious bachelor with several pierced hearts in his past and in tow, the freedom allowing him to fully pursue his hobbies of collecting books, playing cards and criticizing culture with monastic intensity: persistently, but without undue emotion. Easy with wit and charm, he was nonetheless tolerated, if not a tad feared, for his distant mien and demeanor. Sir John was never seen angry, nor laughing, so both the hooks needed to box the man in were denied the populace.

  But a day dawned when the populace felt it would get to box Sir John in at last, to ink his character into a "He is like _________" or "Doesn't he remind of you _________?", names from fact or fiction that would allow the others to respond with "Aah, how frightfully true that is!"

  It began with an upstart's impertinence of taking a hansom that Sir John had hailed on his latest book collecting visit to Farnham's. The young bravo, a York-bred twig of the David branch, boldly stepped up to Sir John's hailed ride and stepped into the hansom, for all the world as if having bought it the past Boxer Day. Sir John spoke levelly, the David squire spoke coldly, Sir John cut the David twig off with his retort and the clipped countryman challenged his elder to a saber duel at dawn. To which bookish, quiet and parsimonious Sir John agreed to.

  The date was set for dawn two days hence at the usual Thames bank, a sandy hollow that blocked curious (and legal) eyes. Sir John was accosted by several friends and more than several ladies, who arranged their weekly merchant visits to pass by his usual haunts, to decline the absurd challenge, the very thought of it! Sir John replied the challenge was duly presented and duly accepted and would be carried out according to tradition. Imprecations and even one tearful kneeling plea did not dissuade him, though it did bring a glistening to his eyes. He would duel the David boy and the matter was thus set.

  The Thursday dawn was wet and chilly, the fog nestling heavily along the river's edge. A full moon and a sprinkle of stars provided more light than a hazy reddish sliver of
sun as Sir John, accompanied by yours truly, arrived at the dueling hollow. His saber was tucked under his left arm as he removed calfskin gloves and flexed his hands in the dampness of morning. The David lad, haughty and sneering as a wolf pup, arrived with two seconds, a baron from Canterbury known for his love of cheap wine and a pimply youth that may have been the David branch's lesser twig.

  "Are you sure you want to go through with this?" I asked Sir John. His steel-gray eyes met mine with candor. Upset, I overstepped propriety to whisper angrily "Do you wish to die?"

  Sir John started to reply, then checked himself. "No," he said quietly, "Of course not."

  The weapons presented and inspected, the rules reminded, the men took their positions, saluted with glittering steel as the sun rose and began...

  And ended, with savage suddenness as Sir John swept his opponent's saber aside with a quick parry and lunged once, twice, then again, each perfect thrust hitting its mark on arm, leg and ribcage. The David pup yowled as he collapsed, Sir John standing over him with a small smile that defied description.

  I rushed up to the tableau and almost yelled, "By God, you are a swordsman!"

  Sir John turned to me neatly, handing me the bloodied sword. "Am I?"

  And he walked away, to what I later found out was a spirited game of whist.

  NAME THAT TIME

  The first time traveler in history, Dr. Burgonius Limpstead V, flipped the switch of his ChronoMaster FlexTron9000 and plunged into a maelstrom of colors, pain and roaring silence that dropped him in a muddy swamp outside of what would be New Bedford in about, oh, 350 years, give or take a few decades. The automatic “dead man switch” on the ChronoMaster FlexTron9000 flipped Dr. Limpstead back, this time through a typhoon of brazen colors, raw pain and thunderous roars until he plopped limply in the petunia garden of the lovely Miss Rochester-Winthrop, the merry spinster who lived nine doors down from Dr. Limpstead’s Cedar Avenue Georgian cottage.