Words Burned to Flame

by Brian S. Wheeler

  Chapter 4 – The Ruin and the Rot

  I couldn’t sit still long enough for the toaster to eject the frozen waffles for my Saturday breakfast the day I was to interview Mr. Turner.

  “Where is he?” I circled the kitchen table while my mother dipped another batch of candles at the kitchen burner. “He promised he’d drive me to Mr. Turner’s home.”

  “Sit down and drink your juice, James. Your father said he had a short errand first. Besides, I don’t think you want to knock on Mr. Turner’s door too early in the morning.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “People suspect that Mr. Turner has health problems. People think that cheap gin is the only medicine Mr. Turner has to help him with the pain.”

  “Why doesn’t he go to a doctor?”

  “He might not be able to afford a doctor.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. He’s an incredible poet. A poet can’t drink booze and write at the same time. He has to be able to afford a doctor.”

  My mother frowned. “You’ve got a lot to learn about the way of the world, James.” She sighed. “I’m not sure I like the idea of you spending so much time alone with Mr. Turner. Promise me you’ll run back home the moment Mr. Turner does or says anything that feels strange. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you? Will you promise me, James?”

  “Mr. Turner isn’t an old pervert, if that’s what you’re driving at.” I nearly yelled.

  “No, it’s something else I’m worried about. I don’t know how to say it. Just promise me you’ll run back home the moment you feel uncomfortable.”

  The screen door slammed open to announce my father’s return into the kitchen, thus saving me from listening to any of my mother’s additional worries. A smile curved across his face, and his hands clasped some kind of a box behind his back. I needed only a moment to recognize the package’s branding. The box originated from the electronics store at Miller Junction. I growled. Dad knew how much I loved accompanying him whenever he visited that store. He knew how much I loved to tinker with the storefront display computers, and how much I loved searching through the stacks of old records.

  I frowned. “You drove all the way to Miller Junction without me?”

  Dad winked. “I think you’ll forgive me. I wanted to pick something up to help with your interview.” Dad set the mysterious box on the kitchen table. “Go on and open it, James.”

  I took a breath and pulled the inner, Styrofoam packaging aside to reveal a black tape recorder that felt perfect in my palm as my fingers gripped it. Dad always did his research when purchasing electronics, and he even handed me a fresh set of batteries and a box of the blank, miniature tapes used by the recorder. A lovely, red light glowed on the device when I simultaneously pressed the record and play buttons, and I grinned to hear how the tape squealed as I rewound the cassette before listing to the brief bit of nonsense I spoke to test the recorder’s operation.

  My mother remained anxious. “That must’ve been expensive. Are you sure James is ready to take care of that recorder?”

  “I think it’s time we found out,” dad answered. “It’s time we encouraged his interests, Nikki.”

  “Don’t worry so much, mom. I can handle it.”

  “Remember, James. You come straight home to me the moment anything feels strange.”

  “I promise.”

  My mother voiced no further protest as I hurried out the screen door, new recorder in hand, a backpack of notebooks slung over my shoulder. Mom was no fan of my meeting with Mr. Turner. I knew how she argued with my father about the wisdom of allowing me to interview him for my school report challenging me to write about someone who made a positive impact on the community of Addieville. I knew that mom didn’t believe Mr. Turner’s poetry was for children, and how she worried that my teachers would react poorly when I presented my report with Mr. Turner as its subject. I knew mom thought Mr. Turner had a serious drinking problem, and I heard her tell father that, as parents, they couldn’t know, one way or the other, if Mr. Turner could be trusted with a fifth-grade student.

  And I knew how my father responded. He said that any teacher who failed to recognize that Mr. Turner was the best subject a student could choose for the report didn’t deserve the opportunity to teach English and composition. I knew dad was proud of me for thinking of Mr. Turner when the rest of the community shunned him. I knew he believed that good poetry and art would benefit me as I matured into a man. I knew that my dad seldom argued with my mom, and I promised myself to make him proud when dad fought that argument for me all the way to the end.

  Gray, asbestos siding covered Mr. Turner’s home, a small house with a steeply-slanted roof covered with shingles warping beneath tuffs of green mold gnawing where water likely seeped into the home. An empty, aluminum carport with a plastic awning had been built onto one side of the house, and the remainder of the home appeared to lean against that addition for support. Every window was broken, with plywood panels nailed behind the panes to prevent people from peeking inside and to keep the wind out. The home suffered from disrepair, with crooked gutters and water stains streaking down the siding. Yet it was hardly in any worse shape than the rest of the homes standing on either side of the street.

  Dad gently gripped my elbow before I climbed out of the car. “I have one more thing to help with your interview, James.”

  I didn’t breath as he reached into the backseat and handed me a bottle wrapped in a brown, paper bag. I stared at him as I took the offering.

  “Don’t you dare tell you mother about that bottle of gin. She wouldn’t understand. And don’t you make a fuss when you give it to Mr. Turner. Just tell him it’s a gift from me to help him celebrating his success as a poet. You have to be just as careful when you give things as you are when you accept them, James.”

  With paper bag in hand, I climbed the few concrete steps that rose to the front door as my father’s car rolled down the street. I swallowed and poked at the doorbell installed beneath a set of crooked house numbers. When I failed to hear a chime, I knocked on the door.

  “I heard you when you clamored the bell, son,” grumbled a voice from the other side of that door. “They should draft a law against pounding on doors so early in the morning.”

  I flinched when Mr. Turner’s face appeared in the opened door. His features, which never looked healthy in public, appeared much older and far paler as he stood in his home’s threshold. Stubble of a gray beard covered his cheeks, and dark, swollen bags hung beneath his eyes. His long, gnarled fingers rubbed at his chin while I just stood on his step. When his cracked lips moved, I noticed the gaps in his brown smile where teeth should’ve been.

  “You eaten any breakfast?”

  I shook my head.

  Mr. Turner frowned. “What’s in the bag?”

  “Something from my father. On account of your poetry.”

  Mr. Turner grunted and accepted the bottle of gin. “Well, I can’t say my words never earned me anything. Step inside and give me a moment while I mix a little something to chase the morning fog out of my mind.”

  I paid close attention to Mr. Turner’s heels as I followed him through the front living room into the kitchen located in the rear of his home. The house was crowded, and I was afraid of toppling over one of the many piles of newspapers and books stacked in my path. Bookcases brimming with paperbacks leaned against every inch of wall space. Piles of magazines crowded the sofa and the recliners. Several typewriters, covered with wrinkled pages of notebook paper darkened with black ink scrawls, sat upon a coffee table. I counted half a dozen glass ashtrays atop the dark, cabinet television that populated the corner of the living room, all of them filled with the ash and butts of cheap cigarillos. Yet the thick carpet, I was surprised to discover, remained clean, without a trace of ash anywhere marring its fabric, without a single page of newsprint out of its proper pile littering the floor.

  “I think I might have a little something for you somewhere around her
e.” Mr. Turner rummaged through his cabinets and found a box of candy bars. “Ah, here we go. Chomp on that while I put something in my blood to help my old heart.”

  I caught the candy bar when Mr. Turner tossed it to me. I hadn’t seen the packaging for that brand of candy for years, but I wasn’t going to start my interview on a sour note by voicing any concern that the white caramel and chocolate found within the wrapper exceeded an expiration date. The candy tasted fresh and wonderful, and I had half the treat stuffed in my mouth as I watched Mr. Turner take his new bottle of gin out from its paper sack and pour a third of its contents into a pitcher he pulled from his refrigerator. The scent of the concoction wrinkled my nose. Pouring the red liquid into a tall glass, Mr. Turner at first sipped tentatively from that breakfast before finishing in long swallows.

  “That candy help loosen your tongue?”

  I nodded

  Mr. Turner smiled. “Then we’ll get started with this interview. Will the kitchen suffice as a good enough spot?”

  I cleared my throat and set my recorder in the middle of the table. “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”

  Mr. Turner sighed, but he followed it with another smile. “Oh, I’ve got no reason to fret over your recorder, son. My voice isn’t going to betray any terrible kind of secret should it become trapped in that magnetic tape. You just promise me you’ll pay close attention, and I won’t mind that recorder.”

  “I promise.”

  Mr. Turner’s fingers tapped a dance on the table. “Then I’m ready for your questions, James Frost.”

  My mind stalled as I tried to remember any of the questions I mulled over all morning. Mr. Turner didn’t hurry me. His strange face offered no indication of agitation. A question finally came to me, one I originally planned to reserve until closer to the interview’s ending.

  “Why does everybody hate your poetry?”

  Mr. Turner’s strange eyes of brown and green squinted into mine. “You don’t waste any time getting to the core of things, son,” softly chuckled the old man. “Believe it or not, your interview isn’t the first one I’ve given concerning the words I occasionally put to the paper, but you’re the first one to ask why people hate me so. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “I don’t think it’s a strange question, but I guess it’s weird that I’d be the one to ask it.”

  Mr. Turner agreed. “This is going to be an astute interview. Pay attention so you can remember what we say.” Mr. Turner leaned over the table, putting his mouth closer to that humming recorder. “I write what most people would deny. I write about the ruin and the decay of all things. I write about the scent of rot that rises from the most beautiful bloom.”

  “And your poems are enough to make the people of this town hate you?”

  “Son, don’t underestimate poems. They might only be made of paper and ink, but they can be very sharp weapons all the same.”

  “The pen is mightier than the sword?”

  “You got it,” Mr. Turner winked.

  “Are people afraid your words are going to hurt them?”

  “Oh, they’re afraid of something much, much worse. They’re afraid my words will remind them that none of them can avoid the pain. They’re afraid my words will remind them that, one way or another, we must all face our ounce of suffering come the end.”

  “Isn’t that a depressing subject for poetry?”

  Mr. Turner laughed. “Poetry doesn’t always have to be about pretty, little things. Words can carry so much more. Look at this town. Now Mrs. Huber, who used to teach high school English here before the village could no longer to keep its own school building, fashions herself a poet, and who am I to say otherwise? I suspect she works at it about as hard as I do. She writes about one lovely thing after another. She writes about how much everyone loved his or her job at the zinc factory. She writes about the church socials the Lutheran church used to throw on summer Sundays. She writes about how passionately everyone sang his or her psalms. She captures the smell of the October cider festival, and how horses once pulled carts down our streets before there was any kind of mechanical engine. And Mrs. Huber writes it all in elegant meter and tidy rhyme, so that those sweet images she summons with her pen dance through your dreams. Mrs. Huber writes of pleasant, sunny subjects, and I’m sure Addieville wonders why interlopers reward me instead of her.”

  “So the town resents you because everyone thinks Mrs. Huber deserves the rewards you receive?”

  Mr. Turner shook his head. “That would only be a small bit of the reason why. I write what others try to deny so that the people of Addieville can go on tricking themselves that this place isn’t yet dead, so that they can all have faith that a little of Mrs. Huber’s fantasy remains. My poetry makes them listen to what their bones say, makes them hear the truths they wish they could silence beneath the ground. I write about the cancer generations of those zinc workers contracted during their hours of labor. I write about the poison that old factory pumped into the ground while everyone was licking at their Sunday cones of ice cream. I write about the stench of all that excrement the horses dumped in the street, and of the desperate men and women who shoveled the shit out of the road so that the finer ladies could walk to their temperance meetings without staining their skirt hems with crap. I write about all the teeth that were broken and all the blood that was spilled during those bare-knuckle fights the village men organized at the end of a full day of drinking cider at that Autumn festival, so that those with money had something to bet upon, and so those without might bash one another’s skull to get a handful of cash. Mrs. Huber’s poetry writes of the wedding bells, while my verse writes about all the grunting and panting those new husbands soon enough shared with the street whores.

  “And if you go around knocking on enough of my neighbors’ doors to ask them for yourself why they so hate my words, they’ll tell you that they hate my poetry because it’s a perversion for the way it threatens to twist the soul of Addieville into a crooked thing. But I know better, James Frost. I know this town loathes my poetry because it looks into the shadows they all cultivate, because it looks for the skeletons kept in their closets, for the way my verse looks for all the truths that even the worms refuse to digest. They hate my words because they force the people of Addieville to accept that their little community’s nothing more than a bloated and festering corpse.”

  There was a snarl in Declan Turner’s voice when he finished before a fit of coughing shook his shoulders. Mr. Turner covered his mouth and hurried to the sink, but he failed to hide a dot of blood his cough dropped on the kitchen tile. I grabbed my recorder as Mr. Turner poured himself another drink.

  “Maybe I should be going.”

  Mr. Turner wrestled to catch his breath. “It’s just a cough that comes to me this time of year. It passes as the day progresses and I can drink a little more of my medicine. I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s alright. I don’t want to bother you if you’re not feeling well.”

  “Are you sure you have enough?”

  “Plenty for my report.”

  Mr. Turner nodded. “You only asked the one question, but it got to the heart of many things. You’re a most efficient interviewer, James Frost.”

  I phoned home, and mom quickly arrived outside Mr. Turner’s door. I darted down the hall into my bedroom the moment I returned home, anxious to replay Mr. Turner’s words and to draw what further meaning I might from my interview. I only asked one question, and I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough material for my report. I realized I hadn’t even thought to ask Mr. Turner about his family, or to even ask him for another clue as to how he had seemingly brought those paper swans to life at the library.

  But I found there was something wrong with the recording. Mr. Turner’s voice was a mumble from which I couldn’t salvage a word or sentence of meaning. His voice sounded all backwards, or sliced all apart so that all the syllables just couldn’t’ fit back together again. I removed the small cassette f
rom the recorder easily enough. It hadn’t jammed into a mess of tape as I feared. I changed the batteries, and my voice sounded fine when I recorded on a fresh cassette. Without anything else to do, I struggled to remember everything Mr. Turner said about his poetry while I kept playing his broken tape over and over, as if the words would magically find a way to knit back together. I strained my hearing, and I was rewarded with what seemed to be the sound of whispers speaking in some foreign language I couldn’t understand. I didn’t remember a radio or television playing during our interview, and something about those extra, whispering voices made me shiver.

  My report might’ve held only one question, but it garnered plenty of attention at school. My teacher required that I submit another report in which I interviewed our school’s principal, who warned me to spend no more time with Mr. Turner. My classmates snickered, and so my report succeeded best in emphasizing to Addieville how the Frosts belonged in town no more than did Mr. Turner.

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