Wood And Water – Part 3
{- Continuing from Part 2” {Here} -}{-there are 4 parts-}
{- prosodic short story stone riley creative commons 2020 the creds are at bottom -}{-a short story of beginnings-}
[:: Speaking of her young husband, a suicide, the lady told us.. “He did that instead of coming into bed with me! What kind of man would do that? To me!” ::]
Then there was a most particular sensation, the first time I had ever felt a thing like this, someone really looking at you, a thing which one feels very seldom. It was as if there were some sort of lantern light, quite soft and gentle, emitted from his eyes or from his face that shone through mine and shone around inside from place to place while he was carefully examining inside of me, examining everything I was and everything I’d ever known or seen.
It feels as though you are a book with turning pages. It felt as though gentle fingers carefully touched me everywhere to find out what I was, arousing nothing, while tears were pouring from my staring eyes. That moment passed. Then, seeing I was steady still, he nodded once again and then appeared to descend very deeply into thought.
And, to my extreme surprise, still lost in thought, he then went back to chopping wood. And not mechanically, but tending closely to it all.
But I could not go back to work. I was entranced. I stood and watched him. The ax came down to chunk into the wood and he would lean to pull it loose then bend to toss the pieces by and set another in its place. It was dance, and the moving rhythm seemed to help him think.
And now and then he breathed another “hmm” as if some pieces of the puzzle locked together in his mind.
What sort of reasoning was being done? To me it seemed past imagining. Half a dozen sticks he must have done like that while I stood waiting.
At last he stopped and leaned his weight on the ax again. He looked me in the eyes again and said, “It might be that your husband was scared of you.”
That was stunning. I’m sure I shouted, “What! Afraid of me? For what? I was a gentle wife! And passionate!”
But he simply stood up to my outrage. The astounding fellow said, “Yes, that’s what I mean particularly. It may be he was scared of feeling shamed. Shamed in his own heart, by his own lights. You probably know this already, but manhood is a peculiar thing. A fellow can’t do manly business properly unless he’s proud, so there would be another shame. It may be he was scared particularly of feeling shamed when he was in the bed with you, when you were being gentle with him.”
I burst out into sobs and must have leaned against the cold iron pump to keep from sinking to the ground and may have tried to kick it, hit with my fist, but that was idiocy and soon I threw another bucket on the hook and threw my body back into the work.
The damned coward, you see. To be quite frank, I was shouting obscenities for a while until that seemed weak and stupid too. And, to be quite plain about the scene, one should mention I was rather famous among my college pals for the wealth of obscenities that can be learned being a sportsman’s daughter.
But be that as it may, I eventually subsided into silence except that sighing squeak and the liquid gush as I thrust the handle up and down and certainly something of a grunt when I swung each of the heavy buckets back into the barrow.
And Cousin Jack was chopping then again until he paused to speak. “Of course, doing it where you would find him; that does seem mean.”
I stopped, feeling just frozen still as ice, and held my breath.
He said, “But of course, maybe he wasn’t thinking too clearly.”
Now, that did for me. I’m sure I sagged. Simply all the strength was gone from my limbs and I sunk down sitting on the muddy ground.
Poor Bill! The poor sodding bastard. What had he gone through in his short stay on earth? My mind seemed to be suddenly full of every moment when I’d ever looked at him. What had I been to him besides a playmate? I’d been the love of his life, a great attainment, a thing he must be worthy of. I’d felt all of that myself and known he felt it too.
And he had slaved at that sodding job he hated just to prove his worth and build his wife a bank account.
But then my other voice again: The coward! He’d left me here alone to face the wreck and ashes of his death. Could I forgive him that? No, no matter how I tried, because I was myself and here I was alone. Forgiveness? No. That would have been destruction to myself. That would have meant that he was right to turn away.
But then Jack asked me, while I was sitting there curled up and pounding at the soft earth with a fist, asked me “Do you have to be the judge?”
And of course I answered something like: “Yes! A person needs to judge.”
A strong person needs to judge, one who hopes to go through life as themselves, for that is how one makes oneself distinct from others. That is a way to live through pain, by saying you are something else besides. At that time I did not see another way to do so.
But Jack, still resting leaning on the ax, replied to this effect: “You don’t need to judge the trees or birds or hills.”
And that absurdity was so absurd that I began to laugh. There was some sense somewhere in that, or so there surely felt to me even then, and yet it was so far beyond my understanding then that he may as well have been quoting Cyrano de Bergerac about the moon.
I must have felt some sense of riddles, riddles everywhere. I know that I was laughing very loudly simply at the rank mad carnival of life – for which the only sane response will always be rude laughter, in my opinion – and I was somewhat even splashing in the mud by then until he came and took my hands and helped me up.
He even held me round the waist to hold me up, his arm pressing on my breast or visa versa, and he even reached to brush the leafy mud off my behind. And that was quite acceptable because in fact I rather felt as though we had made love. But that only took a moment and in the moment afterward we still held each other. Or it might really be confessed that I was clinging to his arm.
So right beside my ear then, he spoke. It may have been a whisper but also had the sound of words being carefully chosen.
He said, or I remember that he said, “Well, I ain’t necessarily looking for a woman right now.” And then I know he also said, “Anyway, I’d likely guess you’re passing through on important business.”
I nodded then I shook my head and here’s what came from my mouth: “No, I am not necessarily looking for a man … right now.”
Certainly my body was demanding him to a degree which I found amazing, one can even say personally shocking.
Certainly the physical activities and sensations were a thing to fill one’s imagination. There might have been a victory in it too, psychologically, a cry of independence from my troubles. Perhaps even some forgetting of the other male body with whom there had been so many exotic pleasures so many times.
I may have trembled. But truthfully I wasn’t ready for that sort of thing. What sort of weak and needy lover would I be? I’d be a beggar. A sensation one must call disgust and horror rose in me with that thought, a deathly fear of being stupid with him, a fear of clinging and demanding.
And so I did the opposite exactly. I turned in his arms, shoved back from the embrace and grabbed him by his coat’s lapels. I would have shook him if I’d had the strength. But what to say? Then, looking in his face, there was a kind of clarity one can’t describe. I mean, I saw a clarity in him.
He stood there quite as open to my searching as I had been to his before, but inside of him – where I felt full inside of thundering contradictions – inside of him one saw a sort of bright and open sky.
Ah! So! There was his magic power! In a way beyond my comprehension then, by means of some riddle which slid from my grasp immediately, at least I saw that somehow one can learn unlimited powers of vision and understanding.
Understanding: yes. Now, there’s what I wanted even more than sex.
The fists with which I gripped his coat struck his chest repeatedly, pretty solidly, and I was quite demanding.
“How can you see things so clearly? How is it possible to see inside the skins of things so deeply? How is it done?”
His hands were on my shoulders and his fingertips suddenly pressed into my shoulders even hard enough to bruise, in a positively electric excitement at this question, and a fascinating look of wonder filled his face. But to answer he simply pointed toward the nearby trees.
He quite urgently whispered, “Look! Look there!”
I looked where he was pointing.
There was some sort of brightly colored bird hopping round among the branches, among the heavy bending leaves and dripping snow, you see, but it then chirped and seemed to merely twitch its wings and vanish. So I was staring at the empty space where a living thing had been before.
.. .. .. .. (continued in Part 4 {Here} ) .. .. .. ..
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{-there are 4 parts-}
{-From my book.. “Tales Of Men And Women” .. Its overview page .. {-Here-} -}
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