by Tuttle, Dan;
to earth, be charred by fire, and sprout themselves.
With worlds enough and time, this dullest brown
compacted seed grenade makes stuff of elves
and ents and trolls and fantasies come real:
the forests of Red Riding Hood, the Shire,
or Narnia. In hindsight, tree revealed
the way that Stella’d move to reacquire
identity aligned with goals. “Hey, Stel!”
came distant wheezy shout. Ha! Cade, too, fell,
266.
she thought. Sound helped her right herself and scan
forbidden woodlands for some Day-Glo print
of gold and crimson. Far down slope a man
made an involuntary encampment
with flung possessions spread like glitterbomb
as if to mark the territory. Cade’s
fall had been breathtaking, and bitter. Palm
to snow, Stel stood up, starting small cascades
of powder, weight of power. She steadied, swerved
her weight to right foot, leaned, and glided like
she hadn’t moment past been tad unnerved.
Traversing slope akin to the Klondike,
she focused: body’s aches took second slot
till she could get a closer-up snapshot
267.
of if he was okay. She neared and picked
left mitten jutting from the snow, still ten
yards from his body. “Stella, I predict
you’ll find a hand-knit scarf there too,” and then
she did, and held it up. “Okay. See chains?”
“What chains?” “My bling.” “What color?” “Are you blind?
I wear gold everyday, bling brings the rains!”
Stel figured humor probably entwined
with health, so nothing’s broken. Then they’d won!
A little excavation brought delight
when gold shined through the powdered water, sun
reflecting its own hue in chainlink. “Rite
of passage, acrobatics on the board.”
“You spaced and tried a kickflip?” Quip ignored,
268.
Cade flailed his arms like mightiest T-Rex
and showed his dino strength: “I’m buried here,
ten years to life. Need bail.” Indeed, prospects
for digging himself out looked fairly mere.
Stel gave him back his garments and his charm
and from her knees pushed loose the weight of snow.
It felt like wartime rescue of gendarme,
her soldier’s duty ex officio.
Unburied after two short breaks, equipped
again with proper trappings for the cold,
they stood, and hoped the slope was nondescript
from there to base—or if not, then patrolled.
With granted wish, they carved down to the root
of profuse range without a parachute.
269.
“Whoa, Cade,” said Stel, Keanu Reeves-intoned,
“that’s gnarly gnar right there.” She panted, breath
all visible. “Don’t know who chaperoned
whom down the mountain this time. Cheating death
is special kind of thrill, you’d say?” Stel felt
like it was similar to cheating past,
but didn’t want to talk about it. “Welts?”
“Not one,” he said. They laid as angels, gassed
in snow. The clouds rolled by, the air was thick—
or, thicker than at peak, and difference sensed.
“If you could redo life, what would you pick?”
asked Stel of Cade, both prostrate, undefensed.
“Nobody’s ever asked me that,” in tone
of Genie came reply, “I wish I’d known
270.
that there’s no race, no competition, zilch
defining us externally. It’s us.
In ways, I feel like grades just serve to filch
all our attentions when we’re young. The fuss
amounts to roughly nothing over years.
Some classmates graded highly ain’t done jack,
some classmates dropping out have bank careers.
I didn’t view myself as quarterback
until I started listening to rap.
Your hustle dominates your GPA.
If I ran course again, from that first lap,
I’d say, ‘self, you a G’ then go be a
right proper hustler, day one, no holds barred.
I walked too long down others’ boulevards.
271.
And you?” he quickly asked. Attention shift
was noticed by them both. “My history.
No, my mythology,” she said, then riffed
a short time more, then said, “It’s blistering
and getting even colder. Let’s go in.”
In pine trunk skiing lodge pretending to
be paying guests, they scooped from cocoa tin
and brewed up balmy beverage blending two
parts milk to water, sugaring to taste,
which wasn’t much when dominating thirst
was reason for the mug in the first place.
It also pleased their hands, and so they nursed.
The fireplace opened fires in places closed
a long time back, where kindling’d been exposed.
272.
“Mythology,” reciprocated Cade,
“Before I close my eyes I fantasize
I’m livin’ well,” staccato serenade
came from him, “when I wake and realize
I’m just a prisoner in hell. That’s Pac,
in ‘Outlaw’, first song that I memorized.
He rapped about the dissonance of Glock
with loyalty and love, with them-or-I’s.
You’ll learn a thing about mythology
by giving it a listen, ’95,
on Me Against The World. It’s gotta be
a classic on what we become, deprived
of all the civilizing things we claim
society and urban life became.”
273.
The chocolate’s richness fit the lodge decor.
It and the fire breathed life back in them both.
That life took form of words, and Cade said more
with distant look in eye. “And now I quoth:
What I say might save a life, what I speak
might save the street, ain’t got no instruments,
(it’s Killer Mike) I got my hands and feet.
I heard in 2012, and in some sense
it let me change what’s me.” “What do you mean?”
“Did Auntie Tao say much about me when
she fixed your visa?” “No, I knew she’d screen
whoever I’d be staying with, her ken
for people’s always good. I trusted.” “It’s
not safety, it’s that my whole life omits
274.
the need for any explanation. She
said nothing of her second-cousin Cade
because his dazzling personality
was two shades of a good accountant’s: grayed,
and bland. I didn’t know a thing beyond
the textbooks and the weekend classes dad
forced me to focus on. He had me conned
in hope I’d be tracked to Olympiad
in one of them. In honesty, I sucked.
I slogged because it’s only thing I knew.
Nobody took one sec to deconstruct
that all I ever did was overdo—
and, being stretched, had expertise in none.
How’s that for formula to wake your son?”
275.
He paused and sipped and stared into the fire.
“That song goes on, says that it’s gospel, soul,
funk, jazz and even church, from pew to choir
at pulp
it, players Pentecostal, goal
to preach the opposite of pop bullshit.
I liked it, liked that he put self square at
the target’s center in a mouthful. It
was new to me, this way he pushed prayer that
the audience get woke in narrative.
Words put in wind come back like boomerang,
he said, with microphone, declarative.
He pointed it at crowd, they heard, they sang.
Just one song, Stel. I listened fifty times
and realized much more than nifty rhymes.”
276.
“But that was 2012. You mean to say
the Cade I know’s a reinvention?” “Sure.
Who isn’t, Stella? Everybody’s clay,
just some know that they’ve molding hands. Uncured,
we’re pliable. There’s boatloads of pop psych
attesting so. The problem’s that folks fire
their clay in kiln because they rather like
themselves, get bored, get lazy, or get mired
in something, then they switch to stories of
their self as fixed, unchanging. I grew with
a story that was wrong, matured, then shoved
it back to history, replaced the myth
with something better suiting of the grind
that’s more nutritional for hungry mind.”
277.
The cocoa’d cooled to fancy chocolate milk,
depending how you saw it. Toes were dry.
Lodge rental desk continued plan to bilk
day-trippers of deposits on supplies.
No busy bodies busybodied two
who sat contemplatively near the heat.
They couldn’t. Stories disembodied glued
them both together under each heartbeat.
“My legs are getting stiff, I guess it’s time
to waddle back.” “Think we’re too late for spa?”
“Now knowing you, if so, I think you’ll climb
into the bathtub, fill it up, and—” “Ha!
Baths ain’t the same without the jets, sis. ’Ye
would never take a bath that’s just halfway.”
CHAPTER 27
278.
They walked through door an artisan had carved
to get back home to weekend rental where
full tree logs made the walls feel more enlarged,
as if the earth itself planned out the lair.
“A tundra Shire,” Stel mused, and bounced to Cade.
“Yeah, less the rings and drama. And the orcs.”
Though landlord had explicitly forbade
all parties, they prepared to pop some corks.
Their muscles in recuperative mode,
they quickly changed to swimsuits, brought fresh booze
and went to patio. Tub-goers glowed
appreciatively for the session brews.
Such gifts distributed, with words to greet,
they fell to chit-chat once they took their seat.
279.
“Oh, Stella! Saw those literary treats,”
bikini-clad, immersed-in-tub Dar said,
“you’re such a modern William Butler Yeats
on Instagram! A repost to my thread
on Facebook got a hundred likes.” “By whom?”
“I can’t keep track of individuals
these days, folks skip creating to consume.”
“On social?” “Yep. These posts and vids viewed fill
lost sense of self with betters: us.” Stel asked
with no detected false camaraderie
how Dar’d become so skilled to have amassed
so many followers. Gam? Flock? Herd? Siege?
What could such groups of animals be called
when far too numerous to be recalled?
280.
Not needing ’nother nudge toward monologue,
Dar started in on juicy gossiping—
or so her tone inflected. Stel agog,
Dar leaned in, shared her secret sauce, tipping
her hand on every recipe she used.
She loved to be the expert. When her fans
in real life recognized her, and then schmoozed
she’d cancel what she had as other plans
to talk to them at length. To Stel’s delight,
compatriots had tuned out and weighed the
case for, against, the MVP they’d knight
that season: Westbrook, Harden, or KD.
Stel figured watching NBA’d be fun,
but just for rest once coup d’etat was done.
281.
“You follow others?” Stel repeated back,
to memorize the early steps Dar said
paved way for some reciprocation, hacked
the altruism others claimed was dead
on world wide web. “Oh yes, and comment, too.
The more that you engage, the better your
small chance is that the web-linked content you
put in is read. Treat each as letter for
the person whose attention you’re to catch.”
Stel must admit that Darla had her flaws,
but also that she’d guilt not having patched
into this expertise. Conceit withdraws
the curiosities of audience:
Stel’d overdosed on Darla’s gaudiness.
282.
“It’s cold, it’s snowing, and you lack a drink
to warm you up! I’ll fetch another Spritz
for you,” said Stella, gaining time to think
and write down all she’d learned in shorthand chits
on Post-It notes in kitchen drawer. She mixed
prosecco with some Aperol and ice,
took out a lemon, sliced it, and then fixed
it to flute rim. Feigned servitude was price
to get the shortlist of the things to do
to dominate all social media,
from Dar, the opposite of ingénue.
Stel’d choke it down to learn how speeding the
switch from Tee to her could go feasibly:
craft content taken nigh-believably.
283.
That ‘nigh’, that close-enough, gave benefit
of doubt in Darla’s view. Her average fan
tuned in in wistfulness he’d turnabout
from bore to Bond somehow in mere short span
of YouTube clip. Proximity to greats,
Stel thought without so telling Dar, was cause
for every human striving since we’d apes
as parents. Broadcast how self wished-for was.
Produce the self on hero’s arc, elude
the probing questions of the riffraff plebes:
your narrative itself would then intrude
their psyche, and then even if half leaves
they’re left with the impression you’re no peer
and grant subconscious halo you’re premier.
284.
“At home,” Abu began, “I’m one of eight.
We once lived well in Syria, till war
broke out in Lebanon, and our estate
became a looters’ target, laws ignored.
They ousted us from title to the land,
we fled to Turkey. Left in foreignness,
jobs, food, and shelter scarce, we’d not withstand
for long. So we came here. Now sore in this
is me, forgotten as my family copes
by squatting on some land and planting crops.”
Stel felt familiarities evoked
in lamentation life’s but farming ops.
“My parents told of past, but still remained
attached to story royalty’s ingrained.”
285.
The solid patio, a wooden deck
beneath the soles felt nearly stable as
the ground itself, an artificial tech
a
ge-old to fool the feet with fable. Has
the moon scared off the clouds? Yes. Han-loom fan
I’ve looked to from all over Earth… Stel mused
toward end of night electric. It began
that way, at least, then somehow blew a fuse.
Some friends went off to privately do drugs,
some others had too much to drink, some more
expressed a need to get down, cut some rugs,
before their bodies told them they were sore.
And so like bulbs without electrons cool,
friends too turned off when left bereft of joules.
286.
That meant night’s twin headlights were moon and Stel,
a treat worth savoring. She grabbed her pack
of cyan Spirits, snuck out for a spell,
and simply stood, appreciating black.
Black. Black of night. The black that eyelids keep.
The black of back of mind. The black of space.
The black unconscious passing-out of sleep.
The black of holes. The black of things erased.
Her lighter’s spark ignited all that thought
flash paper-like, as retinas reset.
It’s funny, how a tiny little dot
of fire reduces rest to silhouette:
near-literal case there of smoke and mirr’r
(less verse reflective so to witness steer).
287.
Door clicked. “You mind?” asked Joe with deference
that sounded genuine. She offered him
the pack in gesture of benevolence.
“Thank god it’s not an EU pack. They’ve grim
full-color photos of what cancer does.
And, well, I’ll say it works ’cause just one look
is all it took to kill my nicki buzz.
Cold turkey quit for two years, then retook
the nasty habit at my company.
I couldn’t handle all the stress. The break
was time to think. Whoa! These have pungency.”
Joe breathed unfiltered air to cope. Both faked
not being quite as cold as felt. “What brings
you outside for a pause?” “Oh, you know… things.”
288.
Too dark to see if Joe had smiled or not,
Stel found she didn’t really care to know.
In silence they traced through the inky blot,
searched stars for satellite or UFO.
He turned a moment taciturn, time passed
in space of simply silent being. Sky
had steady, pushing breeze that could outlast
the fragment clouds that tried to overfly.
Some time an interval in future, length
of cigarettes reduced to zero’s ash,
Joe let his hair down, scrunchie’s tethered strength
reduced to naught with no object to lash.
“Mm. Things,” he said, “they’re one of my faves, too.”