Angeline - Part 3

The rain was moving dark across the flatland. A great shadow seemed to proceed it, broken only by the jagged, tortured hands of the lightning that snatched occasionally at the brown earth. The old cat, who lived off field mice and crickets in the surrounding fields, had long since scrambled beneath the dilapidated porch. Above were the bones of a dog, nearly cleaned of flesh.

It would still be some time before the rain came. The land granted foresight for weather defeated only by darkness. Storms that rose in the night were the most dangerous. They came like bad dreams howling out of the deep forgotten mind and set horrible twisting winds down in backyards with only a low rumble for a warning. Day storms were not as bad. They announced themselves. They knocked before entering.

She was in her chair, rocking in the backyard dust, watching the great cloud bank roll in. She sneered at it and spit a great brown gob onto a nearby anthill. She smiled like a broken fence at the apparent success of her expectoration, watching the panic of the ants with shining eyes. She looked up again at the foreboding sky. Bet that siren’s goin’ off in town, she thought and took a long pull on her whiskey. Bet all dem folks is goin’ to ground. She smiled again.

In the front of the house a crow fluttered down like the last black leaf of fall and landed heavily on the bones of the dog. The sharp beak grabbed a tiny bit of flesh that hung from the empty ribs and tore it away. One last meal before the weather takes it all. One last bite before the ragged bird finds shelter wherever crows go to weather the storm.

The storm began to make itself known in a throaty, complaining, old man sort of way. As it drew closer that almost comforting facade would drop away to reveal the snarling beast inside, but for now she could still sit, drink and spit. S’gonna be a bad one, she thought and knew from long years. And, even as she thought it a long dark finger of cloud dropped to the ground and scrapped up a swirling trail of dust and distant debris.

She groaned as she stood and turned away from the storm with a sort of disdain unusual in the face of such weather. The wind was already singing low tones through the old barn and she could taste dust in the air waiting for the rain to beat it down into a short lived mud. In one hand she held her jug, in the other she dragged the chair. These were her prized possessions, the only things that would cramp the musty space of her cellar as she sat and waited out the scouring wind.

She smiled a dark, jagged smile and thought about the storm stripping everything. This wind’ll be the last a that old bitch on the porch an then I kin have it back. Deep down she hoped the bones would still be there. She hoped the storm would take the stink and the flesh and the dark birds feeding and leave her the bones. In another place, at another time she might have fashioned a crown or armor from those bones, but here, now, she would be content just to have them curled there like a statue of a dogs death in the corner of her porch.

Out front, beneath the porch, the old cat had found a corner in which to hide beneath itself. It would survive the storm there beneath the rattling boards and shivering bones. That porch had had enough of death in its time. It had had enough of giving things over to the other side. Now was its chance to protect, but the old cat didn’t know this. It shook and squirmed with scarcely understood terror in the dusty dark.

The woman grunted in the language of long years as she dragged the old chair down the rickety wooden stair and into the small basement. Her late, late husband had dug the thing many years ago, meaning for it to be a shelter and a root cellar and a place to store all that needed dark cool storage in the long days of heat and light. But, the soil was rocky and uncooperative, and he was short of temper, energy and sober moments. So, the great project ended as a small room with space for nothing more than a chair, an old woman and a jug of whiskey. Even the stair which came down into it rode a slope to the bottom and had no space behind for storage of supplies.

The storm cellar had a door, stolen long ago before another apocalyptic cloud bank, from the face of the old barn. They had slaughtered the last of the horses and could find no more use for a door on the dying structure. This door ended up being her husbands penance for the sad state of his cellar. That first storm it was simply a heavy piece of wood to lay across a small hole, but as time passed and the unfinished cellar gnawed at him, the sophistication and finish of that great door grew. In its final state, reached only days before a fevered death dragged the wasted man down, it lay across the opening of the cellar, fresh stained and riding on two smooth metal tracks. These tracks were fitted with bearings which allowed the door to open and close so smoothly that a child, were one foolish enough to wander into that place, could easily operate it alone. This is the only reason the old woman was able to pull it closed now and pitch her into the darkness of a single fluttering candle and a long wait.

She hooked the two great hooks of the door into their respective eyes and climbed back down, wheezing and muttering. Sitting in the chair again, with candle light playing cruelly in the dark shadowed creases of her face she drew long and hard on the jug, letting fire precede rain, letting the long slow burn come before the quick twist and tear of wind.
Sleep beat the storm and she sank down into it. It was a deep terrible thing fueled by age and whiskey, and each time she succumbed to it she wandered deaths long shore with one foot in the cool water. There she tasted the sour past on the ethereal breeze and spat into the wind of her own undoing. While outside the storm tore the world asunder.

She woke to silence and eerie dark. The candle had eaten itself to the floor and the storm had passed. She stood and made her way stumbling up the short stairs, undid the door and slid it smoothly open. There were vast and shining stars above her as she climbed out into the shadowy wreckage of her house. No wall stood and the roof of long days past was nowhere to be seen. Her meager possessions were strewn about or gone and the moon picked out bits of cloth, tins of food and the shining pieces of glass that once were windows. Turning around she saw the one thing still standing, completely intact. The porch, attached to nothing appeared untouched. Even its shallow pitched roof still hung improbably over it.

She grunted and went back down the stairs for the jug and the chair. She dragged them onto the porch and sat down for a drink. The old cat, rejoicing in the sparing of one of its few remaining lives sprang out from below and into the mouse filled fields with an almost youthful vigor. The woman drank, drank and passed out again.

When the sun rose it caught in its fiery eye the impossible porch, the sleeping old woman and the gleaming, clean skeleton of a forgotten dog.

Angeline - Episode 2

The old truck rattled like a skeleton dance down the dusty strip of broken road. There was only one house on this dirt and gravel excuse for potholes, and he could see it through the windshield, sitting like a vulture on the corpse of desiccated farm land. The radio was saying something high pitched and tinny about love over the metal shake of old bones and the low down diesel growl. He didn’t hum along. He never did.

He stopped in front of the withering structure and a cloud of dust washed over the truck like a dry wave in a parched sea. He turned off the engine and sat for a moment. He was in no hurry. The house sat too, the color of unkept teeth, singing softly in the hot breeze. A tumbleweed like a gamboling puppy bounded across the yard. He shut his eyes and breathed for a moment, alone in that warm darkness.

It came first through the cracks and holes in his rusted out chariot like a swarm of smaller, insect-like reeks, and he opened his eyes in disgust when the first buzzed deadly into his open nostril. The stench was terrible. It was a physical, tangible thing. It was the kind of smell you could take a swing at. He waved his hand violently in front of his face and coughed. His eyes filled with tears and the coughs joined forces to form a small but convincing fit.

Recovering but still sickened, he reached into the back of the truck and pulled a single envelope out of a bag. It was white, crisp and official, stamped with a red “urgent”. He kept one hand over his nose and mouth and, with the letter in the other, went out into the dust and stench.

Outside the sickly sweet smell of rot was dense and almost wet in the dry air. The light breeze fluttered the white envelope in his hand like the lost wing of a dove, blood stained, broken. He was crying openly now as the death smell stink came in hot waves from the very porch he was walking toward. He hurried in the shuffling limp of the long wounded, determined to see an end to this ordeal, to do his job, turn away and leave the horror of this air.

A crow fluttered up stark black and startling from the porch as he approached. It flew like the letter’s opposite, though both spelled doom in different tongues. He could hear the heavy buzz of fat satiated flies. Bile made exploratory forays into his throat as he began to fear the source of this odor more than the odor itself.

The piece of newspaper nailed to the beam of the porch shifted in the corner of his eye. It caught his gaze and drew it. Written in a heavy hand in some greasy substance across the fine lines of the newsprint were a small collection of words. “Dead dog stink holds the front porch. Go round back.” Relieved, he turned and nearly ran around the corner of the house. Up wind now and winded, he breathed deep, and the dusty hot air tasted like cool mountain spring blooming in his lungs. Dead dog stink was definitely in control of the front.

Around the back corner of the house the old woman waited for him. She sat rocking in the cracked earth dust of her back yard with a jug hanging from one gnarled finger. As he approached she spat a swollen, black, tobacco gob onto the parched ground, and he couldn’t help but stare at it quivering there. But even that thirsty earth wouldn’t swallow it. The expectoration sat solid at the gates of the firmament and waited for the sun to do its work.

At first he thought she was asleep. Her eyes were closed, and her rocking was subtle enough to be somnolent. She wore drab ill fitting clothes, jeans and an old pearl-snap shirt decorated with stalks of wheat. He almost thought she and the rocking chair might have just grown up out of the earth, another browned and sad plant in this brown sad land. But then one of her milky eyes snapped open, followed in a more stately manner by the other. She stared at him with a hard scowl.

“The hell you starin at ya no good trespassin son bitch? Best git on outta here for I have to fetch my gun.”

Her voice was full of the hard dust and rocks he was standing on. It might as well have been the old terrible house, or the brittle field talking.

“No. I mean, I’m not trespassing. S’just a letter here for ya. Looks kinda important.”

“Looks kinda important. Looks, huh? You sposed to be lookin at my mail you spyin little shit? Hand that there over and git your sorry ass off my land.”

“Yes ma’am. I mean, I didn’t mean no harm by it ma’am. Here’s your letter now.”

He stepped toward her quickly and held out the shaking envelope. It hung for a moment on the end of his arm like the last leaf of fall until, as winter does, she snatched it away. She tore it open with one long withered finger and exhaled loudly through her nose as she saw what it held.

“Um, well gooday to you ma’am”

“No, no, you wait there one minute boy. I got a letter that needs sendin’. ‘Sinside. Wait here. I’ll git it.”

She took a match out of her front pocket, struck it on her jeans and unceremoniously lit the envelope and letter he had brought on fire. It gave off thick oily smoke and she held it until the flames licked at the dry paper of her wrinkled hands. Then she tossed it into the air and turned away before it had broken apart and rained its white ash to the hard ground.

He thought about leaving while she was gone. He could have just turned and run back around the sad house, through the dog corpse mist and into his truck. He could have proceeded a great cloud of dust away from here and back onto the black smooth road of the real world, but he did not go. Instead he waited and casually scattered the ashes of his reason for coming out here with the toe of his boot. He gathered a little saliva in his dry mouth and tried to hit the last glowing piece of discarded paper, but he missed and had no spit to try again.

He didn’t see or hear her come back out and she was nearly on top of him when he looked up. He started and she gave a disdainful snort which somehow made him feel smaller, twisted and weak.

“Here”

She handed him a letter.

“Now git.”

She went back to her chair and picked up the sloshing jug. She gave the mouth of it a quick meaningless wipe with her sleeve and poured a long draught into her nearly toothless maw. He swore he could see the rotgut fumes distort her face as she drank. Shuddering he hurried around the side of the house, through the terrifying gauntlet of rot and into his truck.

He looked at the letter in his hand. It was addressed to Dirty Son of a Bitch, 1500 JFK Boulevard, Philadelphia, PA 19102. There was no postage stamp but he had expected that. For a moment he considered not sending it, maybe even opening it, but the same feeling that held him when she went inside for the letter held him again. He would send it. He would pay the postage himself. He would not dare to cross this woman, even if she would never know.

Angeline - Episode 1

The old dog, mange ridden and nearly creaking with long years, rubbed his back against the edge of the rocking chair. The itch was a deep one though, maybe too deep, maybe the very itch of his death swollen and reddened beneath patchy fur and drying skin. He rubbed like he might quench that thirsty specter if only the scratching were hard enough. He rubbed like a search for immortality or, at least, for the easy oblivion of forgotten ends. Harder he rubbed and the chair began to rock. The wood of it protested the disturbance loudly with cracking, scraping syllables, but the old dog did not relent.

A hand hung over the arm of the chair and from the thumb of that hand hung a jug, uncorked and sloshing at the very edge of empty. The arm was, at its furthest point from the jug, attached to what appeared to be a terribly ancient woman. Though, in truth, she looked to be built entirely of old leather, dust and moth leftovers. One could hardly imagine her, at that moment, moving on her own, much less containing the soul supposedly gifted to all living things. Gray hair wandered sparse and limp around her mottled scalp as it was stirred by the tepid breeze. A single fly investigated the corner of one closed eye and the thin sheen of drool shown on her slumped chin. As the chair rocked with the dog’s self-ministrations she stirred in that sleep which so recently had impersonated its darker, more permanent cousin. The fly, disturbed by her movements began long, lazy, circular patrols of the area, adding its buzz to the sandpaper dog skin, the creak of porch boards and the suddenly noticeable, labored breathing of the chairs occupant.

The dog was panting his exertions. This was more exercise than he was likely to get in a typical week, but now that he had started in on the turgid spot, he found himself unable to stop. The sun had moved down low enough that the long shadows of the trees across the field were touching the porch with ominous fingers. On some level the dog wanted to end this inane rubbing, which wasn’t helping anyway, and go lay down, cradled in the cool palms of those growing shades. He could not though. He was driven by some greater force, maybe, or chance itch and senility had coordinated their arrival.

The jug began to crawl toward the end of the thumb as the rocking of the chair continued. It climbed the arthritic, wrinkled knuckle. It slide smoothly over the cracked gloss of the fingernail, and it fell with a thunk and a short but unfortunate glug onto the planked floor. The dog, shocked from the mechanical rubbing that had opened up a raw, bleeding wound on his back, cowered instinctively against the porch rail. Red blood stained the faded whitewash where his back touched it, and he whined quietly to himself.

The old woman sat up wide eyed at the sound, and a slow rage began to take her. One could almost watch it climb her decrepit body as she turned and saw the jug leaking the little precious fluid it held into the porch boards and the dirt beneath. Her feet tensed as that twisting fury left the tortured earth and climbed into this new, more dangerous vessel. Her hands gripped the arm rests of the rocking chair with such intensity that her entire body began to shake. The deadly wrath filled her aged head with a cold shining draught that poured clear from her cataract fogged eyes as she turned her gaze on the quaking beast. She stood then, on legs firmed by the brief youth of hell’s gift and, taking two confident steps, swung the devil’s own kick at the bleeding, itchy pile of tormented mange that had dared disturb her sleep and spill her precious drink.

Something in the old dog snapped, and the itch gave way to an intense burning fire that quickly faded into a kind of quiet warmth. He whimpered one more time as he fell at the woman’s feet, but it was not a whimper of pain really. It was more a sob of relief, the last tear at the end of a long despair. He laid his old head on the cool porch and fell into a softer light. He found he was standing refreshed and younger in one of the great flowered fields of his youth. Around him bees sung their monotonous song and the rustling grasses spoke the language of long simple pleasure. A house stood in the distance painting the blue sky with a thin line of smoke. He almost barked with joy, but there was something in his mouth. Slowly, he looked down and saw, to his infinite delight, that he was biting his own, furry, tail.

The old woman grunted and kicked the dog’s corpse again lightly. The anger had left her, and now she felt unsteady. She looked at the dead thing at her feet and out at the field where she knew she should bury it. Then she looked down at her shaking legs and emaciated arms. No use, she thought, doesn’t matter none anyhow. She bent slowly and picked up the jug. Sitting back in the rocking chair she tipped the mouth of it to her cracked and broken lips. A tiny drop spilled forth to wet her desert tongue. She grunted again and tossed the empty jug to the ground where it rolled to rest against the cooling corpse of the old dog. Doesn’t matter none anyhow.