Everyone smiled knowingly.
After the tearful goodbyes were spoken, the female man and her family made the long journey back to the lighted hole in the firmament, and they descended the many thousands of stairs on what remained of what once may have been a tower built by mans who wanted to join with the gods, and they returned home to their world and all of its problems.
And they were happy.
And her boy, who had become a full-grown oaf with boys of his own and an oafen wife who shared his mother’s name, went back to his bed in his childhood home.
And he was happy.
____________________
And on the last day there shall come fire everlasting, and all things in the earth shall be burned, and then great heaven shall rain down her tears as on the first day when all things were born.
—Great Scripture
13
Jack
Jack made two final trips up to the realm of the oaf. He traveled both times with his stepson, the man-oaf Mike, who as he aged had become less simple and was beginning to show signs of true wisdom. Now at long last they understood that because he was part oaf, his cognitive development had only been delayed and not completely absent as they had previously thought.
The first trip took place six years after the triumphant journey with his wife and family—six years for the man, but only two years for the oaf. Jack returned from the first trip greatly disturbed, despite the large bag of silver he had pilfered.
He was troubled by what he had seen above the firmaments, and he would not talk about it.
A week passed. Then two. Finally his wife, whom he called Rose because of her red hair, pressed him hard until he said to her, “Zloty’s wife is dead. One of his sons is dead. It has been a year of winter. Winter has lasted for a year, but it is beginning to thaw. All of the crops are dead. It was a year with no spring, no summer, no fall. The poor have suffered the worst of it. Zloty’s parents are both ailing. He sent a message for you, and the message is this:
The conversation that we had when you visited remained in my head for a long time after you left, and I began to see signs that reminded me of your warning—not the deaths of my beloved wife and my beloved firstborn, but signs in great nature. You said that unlike other creatures, the oaf understands that he is destroying the world for selfish reasons and that if he were to correct his actions, he might halt the destruction. Are we destroying the world? Well, there is this present year of ceaseless winter. I have heard say that the wildernesses are flooded and that the rain is headed to the cities. This is destruction, is it not? But is it worldwide? Who is to say? Nevertheless, I would try to do something about it. So I united with several like-minded companions and we campaigned for an audience with the great leader, who after many months and much agitation on our part agreed to meet with us. He listened politely and with great patience about our need to mend our ways, to apologize to great nature by putting things back the way they used to be, and afterward he gave us assurances that if we did not end our fascination with these doomsday prophecies, he would have us arrested and severely punished. Well, I have another son at home and my parents to care for, so I relented. Now, do not you despair over us. The oaf is strong. We will survive. We also are a part of great nature. We are natural creatures. The great creator does not hate us. This is not his punishment of us for our wickedness and our indulgences. As the great leader and his advisors said, “Though for us it may be the last day, for the earth, it is not the end of days. For the earth, it is but a dark day.”
With tears in her eyes, Rose cried, “That’s it? That’s the message?”
“That is the entire message,” Jack said.
* * *
Jack’s final trip took place six years after that last one—six years for the man, two years for the oaf—and when he and his stepson the man-oaf returned, he would not speak of the trip at all, no matter how hard his wife pressed him.
He surrendered to her the large bag of silver and the bag of gold that was twice the size of the silver, and he told her, “We shall live out the rest of our days on these bags. We are wealthy for the rest of our days and all the days of our children, but I shall nevermore return to that world and I shall nevermore speak of it.”
It was the son, the man-oaf Mike, who told her about that final journey to the world above the firmaments.
He said, “The oceans cover the face of the earth. What little dry land exists is overrun with rats and other vermin, and their hunger is great. Where are the bovins and hosses and dogs and cats? Under the water. The sun is overly hot. Even the stars shine too hot. The ocean boils. To journey in the heat of the day is to risk death by fire. Better to journey at night. Life? We found a few mans piloting a boat and rode with them to see what was left of the world. They shared their food with us and we our provisions with them. Their meals were harvested from the sea—fish and the green weed that floats on the surface. We saw no birds while we were there. It is a world without birds. We asked the mans—for they were talking mans—where the cities and villages were. Under the sea, they told us. Charting our course by the stars, we rode with the mans to the place where your master Zloty once lived. The place where your master Zloty once lived was covered by the ocean. There was nothing for the eye to see but water. We sailed to a small island that was not covered by water, and the mans had set up a village there, but the water was rising. The man in charge told us, You may not believe this, but this is the very peak of a great mountain, not an island, and soon, in a year, maybe two, it shall be covered. We shall have to find another place, or live forever on the boat. On the island, they had silver and gold which they did give to us, for mans know not the value of silver and gold. In fact, the mans cursed the silver and the gold, believing that they were somehow to blame for the demise of their world, though they could not explain specifically how. After a few days, they returned us to the top of another high mountain—the same that has the cave in which the portal between the worlds is hidden. It must have been high tide. When we had arrived there in that world a few days before, the cave atop that mountain was dry land. But now as we were departing, the cave floor was covered with the ocean up to and over Jack’s head and so I carried him on my back through the cave and to the portal. We went through and managed to close the firmament door above us, but water gushed through it, raining down on our heads as we descended the stairs. It was a thing I never wish to see again. A world as it passes away. A world that is dying.”
“The day of the oaf is at an end,” Rose said, bitterly weeping. “Mother was right. Oh, fi, fi, fi, she was right.”
14
Mike
When Mike reached the age of 119 and a half, he weighed a slim 302 pounds. He had never been a big eater and thus had always kept his weight down: he stood 9'6".
He was 119 in man years, which was the age of forty or so in the reckoning of the oaf. He had the appearance of a very tall, powerfully built gentleman of middle-age years with a full red beard. He walked with a back that was erect and proud despite his years, for as an oaf, he was still in the first third of his life.
As an oaf in the world of oafs, he would have been called shorty.
Down here, they called him big man, listed him in Guinness, wrote textbooks and newspaper articles about him. A marvel of nature. A mystery of science. Ageless. A big oaf—and that last was not said as a compliment. It was said because he had never been able to excel at the sport of basketball—never been able to excel at any sport despite his gift of great size.
Solitude suited him. There were too many questions down here, and he didn’t like being a celebrity anyway—too many cameras, too many reporters, too many questions.
And his family was gone—mother, stepfather, brother, sister, and even the son that he loved—fi, fi, fi, the life of man is so brief.
And so Mike moved to the mountain to think—to the mountain, whose snowy peak touched the clouds that hid the portal between his world and theirs.
&nbs
p; His home was on the mountain, and he had lived there three years, three man years, one oaf year, before he made up his mind to see his plan through to the end.
He had decided at last that he was more oaf than man, even though that other world had passed away. He had been there with his stepfather on that last trip through the portal so many years ago. He had wept when he saw the devastation, because even back then, in the back of his mind, he had lodged the plan to remain there forever.
Before he had crossed through the portal, he had been planning to tell his stepfather these words at the end of their silver conquest: Now, you go back to Mother and brother Bob and sister Janet and tell them that the big boob loves them, but he just does not fit. I just do not fit, Father. I am a freak in that world of yours and I am not going back. I will remain up here with those of my own kind, and I am changing my name to Tlotl. You and Mother will just have to learn to deal with it.
And Mike, who wanted to be called Tlotl, knew that his stepfather, a wise and reasonable man, would have understood and supported his decision.
Jack would have nodded and said, Just help me get that silver back through the portal, kid, and you do what’s best for you. I’ll tell your mom. She’ll learn to deal with it. We’ll come up and see you from time to time. Don’t you worry about us. Live your life the way you see fit.
Instead, when they got up there, the world of the oaf was in its death throes, and his dreams of living in a place where he was not a freak, but a common oaf with a common name, were gone forever.
So he married a woman and tried to live a normal life. The only good that came from that was his son, and now the son was gone, having inherited from his mother that peculiarly human disease called short lifespan and succumbed to it at age eighty-one (in man years).
The life of a man is so brief.
The life of an oaf is so long and so lonely.
But here on this mountain, the lonely, loveless, companionless freak had developed a final plan. He would go through the portal one last time and die up there.
It is fitting that my bones should rest up there. I shall set out swimming in the great eternal ocean and swim until the strength leaves my body and I surrender my life to the murky deep.
He reached up and found the secret latch to the door into the lower firmament and he opened it and pulled himself up and in.
He rested on the bottom rung of the nine miles of stairs and tugged thoughtfully on his long red beard as he gazed at his strange surroundings. All he could see were clouds on the ground, and jutting up out of the carpet of clouds here and there were the well-preserved corpses of the several oafs Jack had slain with his pistol so many years ago.
He sighed, memories. Memories. Fi, fi, fi.
Then he began to climb the stairway to the upper firmament. And he climbed and he climbed, and he did not stop for a rest. When he reached the top of the stairs, he stopped to say a prayer: “Lord and creator, be with me as I return to the sacred dust that made me. Amen.”
Then he sang a song that his mother used to play on her small singing harp: “In the heart, in the air, hear the joy everywhere. Shall we call, shall we sing, of the joy everywhere? Come, my friends, let us sing, of the joy everywhere. There is joy, there is joy, there is joy everywhere.”
“I have no friends,” he said aloud, “but I have joy, dear lord.”
And he undid the latch on the door through the upper firmament and he opened the door, bracing himself for the rushing flood of waters which would likely knock him off the stairs and send him tumbling down to his death, his body as broken and lifeless as the quietly resting corpses of the oafs that Jack had slain with his pistol.
But there was no water rampaging down through the door in the upper firmament.
“I guess it is low tide. I got lucky,” the man-oaf mused as he pulled himself up to the hole in the firmament and then climbed into it.
He made it through the many tunnels. He made it to the cave. The cave was dark as always, but the ground was dry. There was no water beneath his feet.
“Low tide,” he said again. “Am I not the fortunate oaf?”
In the cave, which was bereft of life except for his, he had another moment of reflection.
“This is the place where I was conceived. This is the place where that vile oafen general took advantage of my mother.”
He left the cave, and the sun outside was bright, so bright that it took his eyes many minutes to adjust.
“The sun is still so hot,” he said, and he was momentarily seized by the fear that he might die of fire before reaching the ocean, but when his vision had cleared his skin felt no pain and he saw that he was on a green mountaintop.
Green.
There were trees and grass and flowers in bloom. He looked, he looked and looked, but there was no sight of water.
“Perhaps the floods have receded.”
On he walked, until he found the path that led down the mountain. Every step he took, he became more hopeful. His heart was filled with hope. He saw small animals scurrying up the trees. He heard insects buzzing. He heard birds singing.
There was a moment of real fear when he spotted two large brown beos blocking his path down the mountain. But he knew that beos were only dangerous if you troubled their cubs, so he waited a respectful distance away from them until they lumbered out of the way, followed by two lively, playful cubs that had been hiding among the trees.
“It is a good thing that I waited.”
It took him half a day to make it down the mountain, and before he got to the bottom he spotted the village.
There were about a dozen houses and twice as many barns. He noticed six bovins penned into a yard and three hosses tethered to a post. He heard the happy yipping of a small dog. Someone—a young girl, a child, from the voice—was humming a merry tune.
His heart swollen with glee, he skipped the rest of the way down the mountain and then bounded toward the village, which was still about a mile away.
Now he could hear the sound of many dogs barking, large dangerous dogs this time. He heard more voices—male voices, adult males, and the voices were the voices of alarm.
There was the sound of a bell tolling. Sharp commands were shouted. He heard the words, “Giant! Giant! Arrow from quiver! Sword from sheath!”
He heard the unsheathing of swords.
He heard the angry hiss-whistle of arrows in flight.
The first arrow bit into his hand like a great and very sharp tooth.
The second one pierced his upper thigh, and his leg buckled beneath him and he fell.
He was close enough now to see that the houses of the village were too small for oafen habitation. This was a village of mans.
There was the sound of angry barking and the shocking pain of being violently ripped to pieces. The dogs were upon him in the pungent stink of their fury, their hungry mouths dripping warm, blood-tinged saliva, their razor teeth shredding flesh.
Beyond the black fur cloud of canine frenzy, he saw mans with their swords raised high, their heavy armor clanking. Now there was a sandaled foot upon his throat, and he squinted up at the bright sunlight reflected in the broadsword whose deadly edge was poised to deliver a deathblow and behead. Now there was the shout of “Monster!” from the rumbling voice of the brave warrior—the brave giant killer looming above him.
“I am a man! I am a man!” he shouted frantically in Frisian, then English, then Dutch, then Swedish, then German—
There was a moment when he thought he would surely die, but then the noble giant killer rumbled another command and the dogs were pulled off and the biting ceased.
* * *
“The world survived the way it has always survived,” the sacred speaker of the mans said in a language they called Deutschailai, which was a mixture of German, Old Frisian, and English. Mike, a student of language as had been his stepfather before him, found that he could communicate in Deutschailai with very little difficulty. “The storms washed away the old, and
the new grew back in its place. We do not know why it happened or how it fixed itself, but the waters began slowly to recede after ten years, though it was a slow process. The plants came back shortly thereafter. My people with what animals they could take lived on boats and rafts and anything that would float during the ten years of the great waters and then the forty years of the lesser waters that followed. I was born on a boat and did not leave it until I was well into my middle years. The first time I set foot on land that was not a small island was when I was forty-five, and now I am sixty.”
Mike, the man-oaf, sat at the head of the great table, a place of honor, and listened to the words of the sacred speaker of the mans. Mike wore the bloody bandages of his recent injuries on his hands, legs, and face. The dogs that had bitten him earlier now begged for scraps at his feet.
“The giants,” the sacred speaker said, eyeing Mike curiously, “some of them survived it too. But they are not like they were before. There is no understanding in them. They have no civilization. They roam the world making mischief for all mans. They are cannibals. They seek not to befriend. They want only to eat us. We kill them if we can. We must, for they are monsters. And you look so much like them, though now that we see you up close—you are a man as we are, but a man of great size and wondrous frecks.”
“The world survived.” Mike nodded. “It survived, despite what they did to it.”
“The world always survives,” the sacred speaker said. “The world will survive despite what you do to it. But it is you who may not survive what you do to it. If you are used to living in a green forest and you chop down its trees and turn it into a desert, you will die because you cannot live in a desert. But the desert will become home to those of the great creator’s creatures that can live in a desert. We mans love the way the world is, so we are careful not to do things to make it change into a world that we do not love. Thus, man, who is at one with his environment, shall inherit the earth. The oaf, on the other hand, is selfish, thoughtless, and careless in his actions. Now his world is lost. He had no respect for the natural world and now the natural world has no respect for him. He is a vagabond on the face of the earth. His day is at an end.”
Every Boy Should Have a Man Page 12