Moonmadness

           Switchblade legs in tight jeans, all swagger and style, Jesse would stride down streets familiar and not.  He was all bass line, no chorus.  Jesse always walked as if he owned the macadam beneath his feet.  Rain or shine, sun or snow, no matter, Jesse sauntered with a style that made women turn to look at him and men stay out of his way.  His feet were light, his whole demeanor spoke of someone born of wind, as if any breeze could lift and carry him to where he chose.

           Jesse chose no place; places chose Jesse.  His nature was to ramble like an errant vine, this way and that, putting himself down when the urge compelled him, then pulling up his roots with easy grace and slipping away without forewarning.  This nature earned him names: Dog, Bastard, Wretch, Rogue, Scoundrel, Rascal, Thief.  He was partial to Dog, hated Bastard, preferred Rogue for the sheer romanticism of it.  It was never his intention to hurt or harm, Jesse never had any intentions at all.  He just needed to move without impediment, to have absolute freedom, to be unfettered as a dandelion seed on the breeze.

“You’re a nasty man, Jesse!” had been a phrase he’d become familiar with spat from plump female mouths.  If Jesse could have been hurt, he would have, but he could only smile his thinned lipped smile and move on when he’d inadvertently broken yet another heart too fragile for his temperament.  Dog.  Bastard.  Wretch.  Rogue.

It was a big town that drew Jesse’s eventual and erratic attentions.  He tended to stay in smaller places when he decided to stay in place, but the city’s pulse seemed to match his internal rhythm, or at the very least harmonize to it, so he drove his battered vehicle across a very long bridge and settled in for a time to see what was to be seen.  There were plenty of people to keep Jesse interested.  He liked people in general, enjoyed company and conversation and the cadence of voices, particularly new voices with strange accents of which there were in abundance; particularly new female voices that sang in eccentric tongues when he allowed himself to listen close and be lured.

Sophia had an eccentric tongue, perhaps one of the most eccentric that Jesse had ever heard in all of his travels.  He heard her before he saw her, but he felt her before he heard her, a deep melody that sawed and ground itself into his brain.  She was weighted and solid as granite, polished as marble.  She was city through and through, her scent sharp with spice, smooth with vanilla, sweet and savory at the same time; enough to make his mouth water.  When Jesse looked at her with his straightforward gaze she looked right back at him, through him as if he was nothing more than the perpetual breeze that wafted him left and right, up and down, this way, then that.  Jesse danced close to her on his switchblade legs, used his swagger and style, blew hot and cold at her, and still, she looked through him, at him, with a wry smile he could only match in return as if his thin lips were no longer his own.

“You can kiss me if you like,” she told him, as if she had read his mind, for he wanted to do just that, to kiss her plush mouth and see if it was cold as stone.

It was warm and soft as homemade bread left to cool on the back of the stove.  It was iron underneath, unyielding, but forged to withstand time and tide.  Jesse kissed her twice, just to make sure.

“I’m a Dog,” he told her, the words, tumbling from his lips without warning, without reservation.  “I’m a Wretch, I’m a Bastard, I’m a Scoundrel, I’m a Rascal, I’m a Thief.”  The names flew out, telling his story briefly, concisely, with perfect inhibition.  “I’m a Rogue.”

Sophia smiled at him, a pink grotto, lips parted slightly to hint at the secrets inside of her, at the rocky walls, the narrow passages, the hidden spaces carefully guarded, but tantalizing just the same.  She leaned close to him, her melody gone, now strictly drums to his bass and whispered his most sacred secret to him directly into his ear on a burst of warm wind that was distinctly her own, “No you’re not, you’re none of those things.”  She kissed his lobe and sucked the air right out of him.  “You’re just a boy.”

And they laughed together at the simple truth as their song began.

Jack was flying.

           He was wafting on air flows, up, down, as he traveled the length of the long, narrow canyon.  Far below was a river that had done its work carving out the ravine-like gorge that was so deep it allowed for little light unless the sun was directly above.  Jack made note of the natural architecture, the rough blackness of the rocks that made majestic peaks throughout the winding expanse before him.  He flew within the rigid confines, sometimes spiraling up on a draft and letting it blow him where it would, then bored with the random coursing he would shoot up and dive down, down, plummeting ever closer to the fierce ripple of water below until he lifted himself again to soar, soar, soar…

             Jack woke up with a start and looked at his hands, not understanding where his wings had gone to, the joy of flight wiped out by the reality of his humanity and the heaviness of life.  His dream, so full of freedom and promise, so recurrent as to be familiar, left him as it did every day when he woke, only this time, something was different.  Something was changed.  It was a curious thing that he could no longer feel the tips of his extremities.

            Jack wasn’t sure if it had happened all at once or had been a more gradual occurrence, but this morning and could no longer feel the ends of his fingers or toes.  The despair he had been living with, the utter hopelessness of his life, had coalesced into this dreadful paralysis he was experiencing.  It was also a curious thing that Jack felt no fear of this deadening of the nerves.  What he felt was a sense of appropriateness that this would be the punishment for his cumulative sins, which as of late he had been mulling over and categorizing with an impersonal air, as if these sins were not his at all, but the actions of some stranger.

          Jack lay in his bed and looked at the ceiling of his room wondering what to do.  This had become his habit, to greet his day with excruciating slowness and analyze his options.  Get up, or stay in bed?  If he got up, the options increased.  Get dressed, or remain in the rumpled clothes he had fallen asleep in?  Shower, or not?  Make coffee, or drink water?  Eat?  Leave the house, or stay in?  In the confusion of his thoughts, Jack found his options narrow to stagnation.  He opted to close his eyes, to return to sleep and hope that he would return to the glorious dream of the cool, quiet canyon, and when he woke, the paralysis would be gone and all of this would have been some other, wayward dream of someone else’s that had infected his brain.

           This was not to be.  He could not return to the dream and his fingers and toes could not be revived.  Jack sat for a very long time and allowed panic to enter into him.  There had been random acts of panic in the not so distant past, so he was familiar with the experience.  Instead of fighting it, though, with a cold anger toward everyone around him, he picked up a phone and finally called for help.

**~~***~~****~~***~~**

           If asked, Jack could not explain how he ended up on a plane traveling west.  He could not tell a soul how he got from the airport to the structure near the edge of the canyon.  There had been people all around him for a while helping in ways he found humiliating, looking at him with concern and fear and sadness.  It had been excruciating and he had done his best to block it out, to erase every minute of every day from his mind with exacting efficiency.  So there were gaps in remembering, and if memories rose up, they were immediately annihilated.  Instead, it appeared to him that he had been plucked from one place and set down in another with minimal resources and no way to leave.

             He had a sack, large and lumpy at his feet, which were bare on the cool dirt.  He had a blanket, heavy and soft around his shoulders, but wore nothing else.  He had leather thongs tied at his wrist and ankles, firm and binding, yet tied him to nothing and no one.

             “Have you fasted?”  The voice that spoke startled Jack out of his reverie.  The voice was soft, but strong and commanding.  Jack was compelled to answer.

             “I don’t know.”  He couldn’t remember when he had eaten last, had no recollection of food.

             “Drink.”  It was then that Jack saw the man before him, old, so very, very old, with wrinkled skin that looked like the softest leather, yet familiar.  He held out a gourd, something gouged of wood, smooth, yet uneven, and Jack drank without question.  It was water, so very cold and sharp as he swallowed it.

             “Have you something for the altar?”

             Jack fell into confusion, but the old man gestured to the sack at his feet and smiled.  He opened the bag and looked at the odd assortment of items.  The first one he reached for was a flute, shining and metallic.  He grabbed it and it slipped through his unfeeling fingers.  He had to grab for it again with his whole hand to lift it up and offer it.  When the old man took it, Jack felt a piercing in his heart.

             “This is a sacrifice that is not yours to sacrifice,” the man said, but he placed it on a pile of wood and stones mounded near the door to the structure.  “You have more to give.”

             Jack fumbled in the sack again and found two stones, smooth on one side, jagged and cracked on the opposite.  He held them up in offering and the man took them, placing them side by side so that the uneven edges met and the two odd shapes made something of a heart.  Jack felt another pang, this one not as severe.

             “This is a sacrifice that is only half of yours.”  He placed the stones on the mound, one on either side of the flute.  “You have more to give.”

             Again, Jack dug into the bag and found the polished rosewood neck of a guitar.  This time he knew to grab it firmly and he handed to the stranger who now smiled.  There was no pain in this gesture, there was a resonating from inside.

             “This is a very great sacrifice.”  He placed it over the flute and stones.  “Have you a gift for the fire keeper?”  It was only then that Jack noticed another man, someone who looked so very young, yet familiar while distant.  His hand went into the bag and came back with a yellow ball of chamois tied with a guitar string.  The man took it, opened it and noted what was inside, then nodded silently.

             Without prompting, Jack dropped his hand into the bag once again and retrieved three more similar cloth balls, all bound in similar strings, and three more stones, smooth and oblong.  He handed them to the old man who took them with a grin.

             “Now you have given me everything.  You have nothing.  Enter the lodge.”

**~~***~~****~~***~~**

             Dark and warm, the three men entered the structure.  Jack was instructed to remove the blanket that twined around him and to lie upon it while the other men busied themselves with wood and sticks and stones.  In a short time there was a fire in the shallow pit that was dug in the center of the room, and not too long after that, there was steam from a dribble of water that was released onto the hot rocks.

             Jack began to sweat.

             The younger man left the lodge and the old man, now naked himself, took up a rhythm on an inverted wooden bowl, tapping it with a small stone to make sounds that ran from a thick ‘thunk’ ‘thunk’ to something that was similar to the tinkling of a bell.  Jack looked up at the low ceiling and began to see shapes in the steam that curled above him.  They were fleeting things that evoked memories of memories.  His mind didn’t feel like his own.  His body became detached from its moorings and the sweat soaked him through and through until he felt as if he were lying in a pool of his own making.  Salt stung at his eyes forcing them closed.  Time melted until he felt hands lifting him and easing him out into the cool air that made his naked flesh shiver.  “Drink,” he was instructed and he did so without question, quenching a thirst that seemed without end.

             Again, he entered the lodge and again the water was poured upon the hot stones.  He heard the words ‘grandmother’ and ‘grandfather’ and couldn’t fathom what relevance they had with the oppressive heat that consumed him within the confines of the small room.  Chanting now accompanied the drumming and Jack floated on the words, tangled himself in the pulse of it all and got lost in a maze within his own head.  He saw feathers, he saw wings, he saw the fierce yellow eyes of a hawk and his chest filled with some enormous sense of pride that seemed somehow related.  Again he was lifted, brought out of the lodge and cooled, then entered again, and then once more.  The last time the old man hovered over him and raised a knife in the dull light from the fire.

             Jack no longer cared what happened to him.  He stared up through the stinging smoke and steam and offered no resistance to the oncoming rush of the blade.

             Flick, and the leather thong on his left ankle was cut through; flick and the one on his right ankle was gone.  “You have your feet if you want them; the choice has always been yours.  The path is cleared,” the old man told Jack.

             Flick and the thong on his left wrist released.  “You cannot hold one so close that they can no longer breathe their own air.  Your path is not their path. You converge, but you are separate.  You have your hand, you have your heart; the choice has always been yours.  The path is cleared.”

             Hands lifted Jack onto his wobbly feet.  His knees were weak and needed support.  His head was filled with fog and smoke and visions.  When his body met the colder air he shivered; he closed his eyes to the dawn light that was just streaking the horizon.  Jack was led to the lip of the canyon, the ground rough beneath his bare feet.  The fire-keeper, who held him up on his one side, grinned at him, and Jack recognized himself, younger, unspoiled, unsullied by time or experience or choices good and bad.  The old man, who held him up on his other side, grinned at him as well, and Jack recognized himself, older, wiser, the culmination of time and experience and choices, good and bad.  The older man flicked away at the last tether that bound his right wrist.

             “There is nothing; the path is cleared.  Fly.”  And the past and the future pushed at his back… and Jack flew, free and unburdened, wafting on air flows, up, down, as he traveled the length of the long, narrow canyon.  Far below was a river that had done its work carving out the ravine-like gorge that was so deep it allowed for little light unless the sun was directly above.  Jack made note of the natural architecture, the rough blackness of the rocks that made majestic peaks throughout the winding expanse before him.  He flew within the rigid confines, sometimes spiraling up on a draft and letting it blow him where it would, then bored with the random coursing he would shoot up and dive down, down, plummeting ever closer to the fierce ripple of water below until he lifted himself again to soar, soar, soar…

      There was chivalry and then there was the brink of insanity, or more accurately, the abyss.  Who knew that a mere ten months would bring such a change to his life?  Who knew that a night of mad passion, so intense that he could still recall it in vivid detail lo these many months had passed, that such a night would produce such an outcome?  Certainly he didn’t, although in retrospect he believed he should have.   He should have known; maybe he should have known better.  On nights like tonight, or rather middle-of-the-nights-when-who-knew-what-time-it-actually-was, when for all intents and purposes he should have been in the throes of some epic guitar solo, or some epic sex, or even some epic drunk, he truly thought that a bizarre twist of fate had brought him to this spot.

      He looked down through bleary eyes at the outcome of his decisions and actions as it looked back at him while it squirmed and squalled.

Why was he here?  Why was he being the ‘good guy’ and letting his exhausted wife sleep when he was just as exhausted and needed to work later that day and why, why, why would this little slip of a thing not leave the house in peace?

He put his hand on her belly.  It convulsed with her hiccupping cries, her entire chest heaving with the effort she was putting into her misery.  He tried petting her, like he would comfort their dog, but it resulted in nothing.  His shoulders sagged as he reached into the crib and scooped her out, lifted her and held her with her cheek to his shoulder.  The smell of her was so sweet, so fresh, it liked to break his heart.  She wasn’t soiled, or wet, so he wondered if she might be hungry.  Walking barefoot through the house, he tried to shush the morsel in his arms, but she was having none of his whispered nonsense, and his attempt at providing sustenance was rebuffed with even louder cries.

What was he doing here, feet freezing on the cold kitchen floor, the damned dog up now, too and sniffing at his ankles for attention?  Why had it all boiled down to diapers, burping and tears?  Why would this child not stop crying?  He looked at her by the light of the moon that was streaming through the kitchen window, bright enough to see by for once.  He remembered a time when he didn’t live in this house, when he lived in a place more open and vast and free, not cramped and abbreviated by neighbors that were too close and streetlights that blotted out the stars.  It seemed like a lifetime ago.  Maybe it was.  This was a new life, the life of marriage and babies and mowing the lawn by hand rather than by tractor.  Mortgages and bills and responsibilities were his stock in trade now, and for the life of him he couldn’t recall how it all came about to be; this baby, this tiny, tiny thing in his arms, was the icing on the cake of his life.

“Please stop,” he crooned to her, rocking her just a little as he swayed in the moonlight.  The crying was so pitiful it liked to break his heart as well.  He couldn’t stand there anymore; it was too damned cold.  He moved through the house, hoping that the motion would soothe her, walking until he spied a guitar in a corner where he’d abandoned it some days earlier during yet another fruitless attempt at writing a song.  There had been a tune in his head, nagging to come out, but it needed time and coddling.

He held his daughter with one arm and picked up the guitar with his free hand.  It didn’t take long for him to settle on the sofa, legs crossed, his child nestled inside of them.  He held the guitar high across his chest, so it wouldn’t touch her, and strummed the first few notes that had been aimlessly drifting through his brain for days.  Once he began to play, the tune took shape, lilting and airy, as aimless as he felt, as sweet as his daughter smelled.  Once he began to play, the crying ceased.  He looked down at the petite body that no longer squirmed against his thighs.  She looked back and in an instant he saw her grown, a young woman, fresh and beautiful who looked a little like him and a little like his wife but so entirely like herself.  He saw who she was and who she would be.  His chest swelled with pride, with love, with a thousand emotions it could barely contain.

She yawned, closed her eyes and her small hand fluttered across her chest like a butterfly, briefly landing on the body of the guitar, then settling on his leg as she fell into sleep.  He put the guitar aside and cupped her small head with his hand.

And then he knew why… everything.

Josiah Littlebear was a man cursed with blessings.  He had a sharp intelligence, eyes that turned golden when he was searching for something and a restless spirit that couldn’t be contained.  He was gifted with words and music and an opened heart that felt too much.  None of this pleased him.  As a boy, as a young man, he would often ride out onto the plains of his homeland, bursting through the low brush to race across the vast expanse before him regardless of sun, rain or snow.  His favorite time to do it was at dusk in winter, just when the sky turned lavender under a piece of moon, the ground was pale with snow, and the mountains and trees in the distance seemed almost attainable.  No matter; these desperate excursions never fulfilled the dark insides of him that seemed eternally empty.

Josiah left home as soon as he could, thinking, hoping, that somehow constant motion and new places would please him.  He plied his trade in music, always playing, rarely singing, and savoring every moment because it helped to ease the dark insides, if only for that small space in time.  There were always new people, new places; a chain of difference that helped to confuse his discontent but never cured it.  It was temporary.  At night, no matter how tired he was, how worn out he could make himself, he was still restless and unhappy, and felt the pull of the familiar plains where he had started out as if there was a metal thread around his heart that continuously tugged.

The yearning became a seed that took root and became a dream.  The dream became a vision that began to overpower him.  Sometimes the dream kept Josiah awake and he would sit outside wherever he could find a patch of sky and stare with his golden hawk’s eyes until he saw nothing and felt nothing and became nothing.

One day, the dream became real.

Josiah’s roaming had taken him everywhere, yet nowhere.  He woke up in a town he didn’t know, surrounded by people he didn’t know and felt the dark insides of himself well up and overwhelm him.  There was no music where he was; there was no music inside of him, so he packed his few possessions and left his anonymous room, taking off in a random direction to find the road home.

He saw the lighthouse first.

It was dusk, his favorite time of day, and the glint of the beacon caught his eye, riveting him to a spot for a long moment.  He got out of his truck, stood and stared as the tiny silver light drew him.  His ears caught the sound of the ocean nearby and it lulled him, called to him, compelled him to drive on, come close, explore.  The town was small.  The sky was vast.  The ocean was as immeasurable as the plains he knew.  There was an Inn, connected to the lighthouse: The Walking Seahorse.  Josiah decided to stop for a day.  Then he met Maggie Waters and Josiah decided to stop altogether.  He heard music again.

Quick and sweet they came together like fireflies dancing on heavy summer air.  Maggie had pale aqua eyes and a quiet gentle way about her that Josiah found soothing.  She was steady; she was solid and real.  She ran the Inn with firm efficiency and a soft smile that made everyone she met feel safe and content.  There was a garden that grew abundant from her careful ministrations, which offered up the fruits of the earth throughout the growing seasons and lay in sleepy contentedness throughout the harsh New England winter.  There was the lighthouse and its welcoming beacon that Maggie tended every day with equal care, never missing an evening’s lighting.  The Walking Seahorse thrived.  Josiah stayed and provided the music that had been missing in Maggie’s life.  He played at the Inn and in neighboring establishments.  He played on the rugged rocky shoreline for no one but himself.  He played in the low ceiling-ed bedroom he shared with Maggie every night after the lighthouse was ignited outside until the light in their room was extinguished and they could sleep together under a warm feather-bed.  His hand rested on her heart while they slept.

Maggie had her roots planted firm and deep at the Walking Seahorse.  Josiah planted his beside hers.  They were happy for a time.

But the harsh boulders of the eastern coast couldn’t support Josiah’s roots.  His golden eyes began to search the sea, looking for tall plains grass where white caps grew.  The only thing that held him was the beating of Maggie’s heart beneath his hand and her strong back where he could rest his cheek.  Thoughts of leaving seeped into his head, but he couldn’t imagine leaving without Maggie.

Maggie couldn’t imagine leaving.

She had been a part of the Inn and the lighthouse and the ocean all her life.  It had been her family’s responsibility to light the small harbor for centuries and being the last of her kind, the responsibilities were hers and hers alone.  There had been a security in it, in the day-to-day routine of her life that nothing could alter until Josiah came to her.  But she had known when he came that he would leave.  His clear gold eyes had told her so the minute he had shown up on her door, but she could never deny a soul in need and Josiah Littlebear had been such a soul.  What they had together pleased her.  When she dug alone in her garden she allowed thoughts of him to satisfy her; imagined that he would stay forever until forever was over.  Then she would stand and look out at the ocean and know that he would go, and go without her.  She could never leave this place, her home, her life, because it was all she had ever known and she had never been unhappy enough or brave enough to say good-bye to the familiar sights of the lighthouse, the Inn, or the ocean.

Josiah tried to woo Maggie, to entice her with stories of the plains and the farmhouse and the never-ending wilderness he believed mimicked the wilderness of the sea.  He told her of green grass turned to burnished bronze, of a sky filled with stars that seemed close enough to touch and of a moon so big and bright it lit up the night as bright as the lighthouse.  He played her songs that reminded him of those places he knew the best.  Maggie would smile and hold his hand, but he could see her pale eyes drift away from him.  He could feel her drift away from him as sure as he could feel himself pull away from her, dragged yet again by that metal tug around his heart.

He left early one morning taking little more than what he came with other than an aching regret.

Josiah was sure that once he was back to where he had started that ache would resolve itself and he would be reborn on the plains of his past.  It drove him through the days and nights of travel it took to bring him there, and when he arrived again it was as he had imagined it would be.  Green turning to bronze.  Endless sky.  Endless land.  The last throes of a scorching summer turning to the mellow of autumn.  His family’s ranch was still there, alone at the edge of the plains, empty and waiting for him.

He never wanted to leave his home again.  He never wanted to feel anything again.  His music left him.

Josiah filled the barn with hay, bought a horse and rode every day; every night.  He burst through the copse of brush onto the plane and rode hard, taking deep breaths to rid himself of the memory of salt air.  He rode until a physical ache met his internal ache and filled the dark insides of him with exhaustion.  Still, in the heart of the night he woke with his hand searching for that pulse that had lulled him for so long.

When winter came it blew in treacherous snow that left Josiah trapped with himself.  His only movement was from house to barn to tend his horse and worry that the snow would never end, that the cold would never cease.  Numbness settled on him, along with a chill that crept into his bones.  There was no fire warm enough to melt his ice as days blurred into a white frigid fog.  His mind drifted east to the sea, to aqua eyes and feather beds and a strong shoulder that never questioned or condemned.  The possibility that he had made a mistake wriggled into the cold corners of his mind.

The snow stopped and the winds blew, freezing everything in a fairytale sculpture.  Josiah shoveled his way to the barn and found all was well.  He walked back to his house, his eyes turning gold in the weak light of a winter sunset and he looked out across the whiteness.  For a brief moment he thought himself mad.  Mad from being trapped, mad from the snow, mad from the loneliness of being Josiah Littlebear, a man cursed with blessings, a man who saw too far and felt too much and knew too little about himself to get out of his own way.  Maggie slipped into his arms, slipped into his coat and planted her roots inside him as soon as she touched him.

“The seahorse has gone walking,” she said.  She rested her head on his chest and heard his music spill out into her ear.

**~~***~~****~~***~~**

Josiah Littlebear rode his horse hard, letting it have its head as it burst through the low brush on a cold, winter’s night.  The ground was white with snow that the horse’s hooves threw up in crystal showers as he rode under a gibbous moon.  He leaned forward and rested his cheek on Maggie’s back, felt her smile in the shift of muscles there and smiled in return, humming together as they rode into the lavender dusk.