Oftentimes, the world of fantasy represented a man’s sole refuge from the horrors of his own existence. When I reopened my eyes and surveyed the aftermath of carnage, the cruelty of this notion besieged my senses. Two bloodied bodies sprawled out beside me on my home’s front yard. No matter how many times I wished for this scene to fade invisibly into the recesses of my imagination, the authenticity of murder couldn’t be overlooked. My wife’s spilt blood, now coagulating in burgundy splotches on the walkway, stained both my hands as well. In my case, unlike the fingers and palms of Macbeth’s haunted lady, these damn spots of death were tangible.
Before developing any further plan of action, I noticed Cora Hart creeping up Overlook Avenue with her Pomeranians in tow. I didn’t have any time to grieve for my wife in silence; the white dogs barked ragingly on their leashes, nearly dragging the old lady onto my home’s driveway. In her mind, I must’ve appeared disorientated, and the fact that two lifeless bodies surrounded me on the grass didn’t bode well for any sort of explanation on my behalf. Besides, she had most likely already presumed that I exacted my revenge in the most barbaric fashion conceivable. Her face looked almost as pallid as her snarling hounds as she studied my position on the lawn. Rather than try to convince her that I was a victim in this situation almost as much as Rachel, I suppressed my thoughts and remained mute.
During what must’ve been a frightfully surreal moment for Cora, she relinquished her grasp on her dogs’ leashes, permitting them to intrepidly charge across the lawn like the 7th Cavalry into Little Big Horn. Neither animal showed any hesitancy while scampering through the grass, but their snow-white pelts soon displayed the gory affects of such heedlessness. My only concern was to leave this scene. I staggered onto my feet, cradling my journal in one hand and the handgun in the other. The resilient Pomeranians nipped and growled near my legs, but they didn’t stray close enough for me to resort to a counterattack. I heard Cora yelling my name repeatedly, but I was already committed to escaping the area. It only seemed logical for me to return to the place where I always felt most at peace. Fortunately, my retreat beside Lake Endelman was not too far out of range.
Before I departed the scene, I checked the gun to ensure that at least one bullet remained in its chamber. Without glancing back at the bodies or Cora Hart, I then stumbled toward a tree line in back of my house. Although the old woman didn’t pursue me, I knew that I wouldn’t have much time before the police retrieved me from my sylvan sanctuary, but death didn’t frighten me anymore. Although my gait may have been visibly unbalanced, I memorized every weave and turn within this thicket. Once I reached my destination, I’d have a chance to determine exactly how the rest of this day played out.
Within minutes, I emerged through the concealment of trees and entered a clearing in front of my most cherished portion of Lake Endelman. The sunlight already started to slip behind a partition of evergreens, but a few wands of tapered sunbeams glazed the lake’s surface with a tangerine haze. And just as it always had the power to do, the lone willow tree beside the water’s edge summoned my attention. Typically, I admired the tree’s dangling limbs, tickling the water’s surface with a protective instinct. On this occasion, however, my eyes fixated on the cairn of stones I had previously arranged beneath the willow’s branches. For perhaps the first time since I began assembling this makeshift pyramid of stones, I had an inclination of what I intended to do with them.
But before I ventured any farther in my quest, I found my usual seat upon the flat rock facing Lake Endelman. Here I waited for the loons’ calls that I yearned to hear so fervently now. I had situated myself on this stone mantle at least a thousand times before this moment, but the scenic view and sensations all seemed born anew. I traced my fingers over the velvety sheath of moss covering the rock, hoping to rekindle the blithe moments of my youth. My eyes gradually lowered to the journal positioned on my lap. I had still yet to scratch a letter within the book’s pages, but my wife’s blood now saturated the binding. Why hadn’t I written anything substantial in years? I trembled at my own procrastination. The passion of life had faded from my fingertips. What was left for me other than yesterday’s fractured memories, and the uncertainty of tomorrow?
After a short interval with no trace of the loons’ melodies within earshot, my thoughts swayed to the gun I still had grappled in my right hand. Before this time, I couldn’t deny that I contemplated turning the revolver against my own temple. The notion of killing myself with a firearm made me quiver, only because I didn’t want somebody to find my lifeless body in the middle of the woods. But the idea of ending my life was not a new feeling. I then glanced toward the cairn for a second time, and remembered why I placed them on the ground so purposefully. A few seconds later, I stood up from my granite throne, where I left my journal behind but kept the gun in hand while making my way to the collection beneath the willow tree.
Unlike many other flat rocks I had gathered in the past for skipping across the lake, these were slightly larger. I selected each one with a meticulous eye, making certain that the diameter of every stone didn’t exceed the width of my pockets. I then proceeded to complete what I deemed unavoidable now. I placed the gun on the soil beside the cairn and began to methodically disassemble my creation. Instead of returning the rocks to random spots along the lake’s shoreline, I began to stuff them one-by-one into my pant’s pockets. I contended that the extra weight would’ve been necessary to keep my body submerged in the water. Remarkably, almost by fateful design, I had bunched up just enough stones to fully stuff my four pockets. Once this deed was finished, I walked toward the lake that I loved so dearly. If there was a more magical place to take my last breath, I didn’t know of any. In any event, if another route existed for me at this stage, I aimed not to search for it. Rachel’s blood soaked through my shirt’s fabric, and I wanted desperately to wash away the reminder of my futility. How was it possible for me to live any longer with the knowledge that my blundering antics contributed to her death?
A soothing sensation lathered my skin like a healing ointment, and I realized that it was the lake itself that provided this wonder. I noticed that the water’s temperature was uncharacteristically tepid. But how was that possible? It was still early spring, and Lake Endelman’s water never rose above sixty degrees until the end of June. Regardless of logic, I continued to wade into the water until reaching the depth of my waist. I kept the gun raised in one hand, figuring that it wouldn’t respond properly if the barrel became wet. I continued to plod out into the lake until the water lapped against my chest. Once here, I stopped and realized that I had progressed nearly twenty paces from shore.
The lake’s surface glistened with the sheen of twilight. Then, for purposes I couldn’t readily define, I bowed my chin and stared intently at the water rippling around me. Within the protracted rings, I surveyed my own reflection. If anyone had managed to ignore or misinterpret the sorrow exuding from my pores, it was clearly visible now. I cringed at my appearance. What recourse did any man have if he couldn’t even bear to look upon his own image? At the moment, I hardly even recognized the person I had become both physically and mentally.
My procrastination would’ve ended at this juncture if I had pointed the revolver against my head and depressed its trigger. But in the true spirit of my character, before I summoned the courage to do so, a peculiar odor overwhelmed my senses. The fragrance I suddenly recognized was not native to this woodland, but that did not prevent it from drenching the air like a morning mist over the lakefront. The origin of this scent was the glue that had lingered around me all day, but it became particularly pungent in the company of one person. I turned to scan the wooded perimeter, eventually directing my eyes upon the willow tree for a frame of reference. Just beside the tree, sitting on my rock with his arms bent across his knees, I saw the custodian watching me.
I already suspected that he had followed me home, but I never imagined that he’d enter the woods and track me to my secret shelter. He must’ve noticed me wi
th the gun, and most likely observed the fallen victims in my yard. Yet he displayed no indication that I’d be a threat to him as he held his broom out in front of himself as if the maintenance tool had a practical function in this forest. Instead of completing the task, I turned around in the direction of the shoreline and glared at the relentless custodian.
“Why have you followed me here?” I shouted at him. “This isn’t a good place for you to be right now.” My admonishment didn’t cause any noticeable reaction from the custodian. He continued to stare at me with eyes that appeared almost as forlorn as my own. After I returned to the water’s edge, he shifted slightly on the rock. However, he kept his eyes fixated on me as if the cohesive agent wafting in the air had bonded us.
“What do you want from me?” I asked. By now I had stepped completely out of the water in order to study his face more discerningly. Despite my resolve, the custodian displayed nothing but a morose expression. He then motioned to the gun, which I still held in my trembling hand.
“It looks like you’ve come to the end of the line,” he remarked in a whispery voice. “It’s a pity that you think this is the only escape for you, Cobbs.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said, unnerved by his presence. For the better portion of today I felt a distinct aversion for this man, and it now seemed to intensify. “Why don’t you get out of here?” I suggested. “There’s nothing left for us to talk about.”
“I’m afraid I can’t leave now,” the custodian replied. “My job isn’t finished yet.”
“Your job?”
“The job of cleaning up after you,” he said with no trace of mockery. “Isn’t that what I’m expected to do—clean up the mess of other people?”
“I don’t want your help.” The custodian then directed my attention to my blood-splattered shirt and the pockets of my pants bulging with rocks.
“It looks to me that if any man ever needed to sign up for a help club, you’d be its mascot,” he remarked glibly. “But luckily for you, I take my work seriously. People need a good sweeping behind their footsteps now and again, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Didn’t you understand me the first time I told you? I don’t want your help,” I snapped. “Maybe you just don’t know how to listen.”
“Oh, I listen on occasion,” he assured me unapologetically. “But it’s not in my nature to just listen to anyone. In fact, generally speaking, things work out much better when the exact opposite occurs.”
The custodian’s arrogance continued to astound me, especially since he clearly distinguished the gun in my hand. He acted as though his broomstick was a more formidable mode of defense. “You really don’t know when to quit, do you?” I said to him. “You just keep pushing yourself into my business. I’m starting to think that you’re as crazy as I am.”
“I don’t believe you’re crazy,” the custodian countered. “But more importantly, I don’t think you believe that either.”
“You don’t even know me or what I’ve been through,” I grieved. “Now, please, why don’t you go home and let me end this day the way I see fit?” Shockingly, the custodian maintained his position on the rock without flinching. I peered at him anxiously, hoping to at least intimidate him into submitting to my demand. “I need to be alone,” I uttered.
“Why? Are you ashamed of what you’re hoping to accomplish?”
“No.”
“Afraid then?”
“Maybe, but I don’t want to talk about it with you.”
“If not with me, then with whom?”
I offered no immediate response to my challenger. Perhaps it would’ve been justifiable to raise the gun and fire a shot into the air to frighten him away. But I wasn’t sure if the gun had more than one bullet left in its chamber. Even as I stood before him, I couldn’t understand why I so thoroughly loathed this man. The custodian certainly hadn’t wronged me in the manner of Leon Chase, but I quaked with resentment at the mere sight of him.
“Do you realize how foolish it is for you to be here with me now?” I asked him. “It’s not even safe for you to be around me any longer.”
“Even if it was possible for me to leave you, I wouldn’t do it,” he retorted.
“You act as if you’re chained to that rock like Prometheus.”
“Well, then maybe it’s only appropriate that I’ve resigned myself to stealing your fire, Cobbs,” he returned, motioning to the gun. At that precise moment, a crow—perhaps the same one that perched earlier on Cora Hart’s chimney, landed on the willow tree’s branch. The custodian casually focused his eyes on the bird before saying, “but if I let you commit what you’ve presumably come here to do, it won’t be an eagle that pecks at your liver.” The crow’s caw distracted me momentarily, but I was determined to defy my visitor.
“Don’t try to be a hero,” I warned him. “I don’t even have time to explain my motivations to you right now.”
“Time? That’s all we really have, isn’t it? Are you going to let that gun become your stopwatch? Haven’t you learned anything on your journey today?”
Why did this man insist to confront me on my choices? I inched closer to him, so that my shoes nearly touched the bristles of his broom. “You still haven’t told me what you want,” I said tonelessly.
“I suppose I want what every man does,” he responded. “I think it’s the search for internal harmony that prevents us from wandering too far into deep water.”
“And what do you know about finding this harmony, as you call it?”
“Only that you don’t have it yet. But at least you’re closer to rediscovering it.”
This wasn’t the best time for me to engage in a philosophical discussion with the custodian. In spite of his tenacity to change me, I felt as though we had nothing else to debate. “If you don’t leave,” I told him, “you’ll be a witness to something tragic.”
“You still don’t get it,” the custodian sighed. “I can’t let you kill yourself, Cobbs, because I’d also be letting myself die.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you really think you were alone in your travels today?”
“I…I don’t know what you mean,” I said, perplexed by his uncanny intuition.
“Let me help you figure it out then,” he persisted. His eyes swayed to the willow tree before he spoke again. “I’ve scaled the towering turrets of fabled castles, and meandered through the pastoral provinces of English moors. I’ve previewed Victorian cities and surveyed the war-ravaged remnants of the world’s lost civilizations. I’ve journeyed high into the Swiss Alps and Appalachian trails, and deep into the wooded hollows of legendary pathways. My expeditions have guided me beyond the miry banks of the Mississippi River, through the serpentine savageness of a Congolese adventure, and along the flooded infrastructures of medieval Venice….”
“Unbelievable,” I gasped.
“Should I continue?”
I stood before the custodian transfixed, remembering that I had visited all of what he mentioned in my episodes. But how was it possible for him to infiltrate my dreams? No matter how mysterious his powers were in understanding me, he couldn’t have interpreted my subconscious thoughts so precisely.
“Who are you?” I questioned solemnly.
“Exactly who you need me to be.”
“How do you know about my episodes?”
“Look, Cobbs, I imagine you wouldn’t trust me if I told you who I was directly. But if you choose to perceive me as a stranger, then I’ll never be anything more than that to you.”
“You’re just another one of my dreams,” I said, although obviously unconvinced. “If I wait long enough, you’ll eventually disappear just like all the others.”
“But you’re not unconscious now,” he reminded me. “Besides, I may disappear at times, but I’ll never be a dream.”
As ardently as I yearned to extract this custodian from my mind, I knew that he was more than just a figment of my imagination—at least far more than the other
characters I encountered today. My concentration reverted to the gun again, as if this weapon served as the final judgment to our discourse. In an action intended to drive the custodian away from me, I nudged the revolver against my temple. The custodian still refused to budge from his seat on the rock. It was as if dared me to squeeze the trigger. My finger twitched on the mechanism, but I couldn’t complete such a cowardly deed in front of him.
“Is this how you want to be remembered?” the custodian inquired. “Has it reached a point where you can’t see yourself living beyond this moment?”
“What’s really left for me? I’ve failed miserably at everything I’ve ever done.”
“You know that’s a blatant lie. And what is the ultimate form of failure anyway? Is it best to die alone in the woods by your own choice? Is that what you wish your legacy to be?”
“I’m dying anyway. You must know that, too.”
“I don’t see that at all.”
“But you seem to have previewed my episodes. If that’s the case, then you must also know that they’re slowly killing me.”
Since at least this morning, the custodian had studied me as if he had acquired more insight into my own life than I did. As he continued, I had an inclination that he wouldn’t ever abandon this practice. “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to open your eyes and see things as they really are. You’ve plodded through this day with regret for most of the episodes because it was a barometer for you to measure your sickness. But I’m here to remind you that none of the episodes were ever a part of your illness.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” I refuted. “The fact is if I didn’t have any blood clots in my brain, I wouldn’t be randomly passing out.” My argument was uncontestable, but I made a mistake by trying to convince the custodian that medical logic served as a source to my disease.
“It’s apparent that you have it all backwards,” the custodian avowed. “The episodes you’ve had today weren’t killing you. Conversely, they’ve kept you alive.” I didn’t wish to sound obtuse, but I sensed he was resorting to semantics to ease the inevitability of my demise.
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” I told him. “But the fact remains that I’m a dying man.”
“And who among us that lives and breathes isn’t dying?” the custodian asked. “There are countless people who exist eighty years without the slightest hint of sickness. But does that mean they’re truly alive? How many vapid faces have you stared at over the years—eyes devoid of dreams long before they draw their final breaths of air?”
Although I wished to keep my thoughts aligned in the moment, my parents’ images swirled within my head. I then recalled the last words my father spoke to me: ‘I want to live.’ The custodian continued to stare at me as if he interpreted my thoughts without hearing me state them aloud.
“The people you’ve met today,” he went on, “whether real or imagined, have permitted you to live, Corbin Cobbs. No man’s trek through life truly ends until all his dreams fade to black.”
“How do you know so much about me?”
The custodian astutely averted my question by responding with a declaration of his own. “The problem may be that you want to understand too much. Maybe it’s better to leave a little mystery in the closet of your mind.”
“I’ve done enough guesswork for one day,” I groaned. “If what you say is true, then you should be forthright and tell me who you are. I still don’t even know your name.”
The custodian then removed one hand from his broom and pointed his index finger to the lake behind me. “If you really want to know who I am, look in the one place where you always find the most serenity.”
“In the lake,” I whispered, spinning instinctively toward the water again. I scanned the lake’s surface. As I edged forward, the last traces of sunlight beaded on the water. Then, after I felt the water spilling over my shoes again, I glanced down and distinguished my own reflection. I must’ve stared at my haggard face for several seconds before I realized that the gun had slipped from my fingers and sank in the lake’s shallow fringes. I didn’t attempt to retrieve the weapon, for it had no purpose in my life any longer.
“You’re right,” I shouted toward the custodian. “This isn’t the place I want to die. It’s the place I want to live. There’s still work to be done here.” I swung back toward the rock where the custodian had stationed himself moments ago. But my spot upon the flat stone was now empty, save for the journal that I set there beforehand. Rather than attempt to locate the custodian by shouting for him, I realized the uselessness of such an endeavor. I now had a keen understanding to where my peace resided. I checked the sun’s position in the sky again. Even without my watch, I pinpointed the precise time of day. Just a flicker of daylight remained in the sky, but it was quite enough to use to my advantage.
Chapter 73
6:19 P.M.
In the near distance, just beyond the jade camouflage encompassing Lake Endelman, I heard the police cars’ pealing sirens nearing Willows Edge. Instead of focusing on this noise or the lake, my ruminations adhered to the rock. It took me only a few minutes to remove the stones from my pockets, and once discarding the last one into the lake, I felt my silver coin. My loonie was still with me, and I ventured back toward my moss-covered throne as if awaiting a coronation. For a few moments I absorbed the pleasures of my surroundings. The scents of moistened maple and oak were like old friends to me now. Another time-tested acquaintance became apparent, too. I required no further motivation to reintroduce myself to this welcomed stranger.
I picked my journal up from the rock with both hands and clutched its leather sheath as if it was a shield from this world’s calamities. My silver pen was still wedged in the journal’s binding, and although blood darkened its cover and paper, these factors didn’t dissuade me from opening the book. The aroma of fresh paper delighted me almost as much as the loons’ songs. To a writer, new paper signified the possibilities of dreams yet to come. I now had a chance to prove to myself that all my visions of the world hadn’t been squandered.
As I curled my fingers around my pen, I imagined the first word I’d put to paper in over four years. In this moment, the sound of the sirens became almost nonexistent. Something much more calming encompassed my ears. I had almost surrendered any hope of listening to what I yearned to hear again, but my winged saviors had come back to Lake Endelman to entrance me.
The common loons’ songs pulsated with a haunting rhythm, encouraging me to write words that first formed in my heart. For as long as I was able, I’d remain here and revisit the wonders that I ignorantly abandoned as a younger man. My father once told me that every moment of life delivered a man closer to his true nature. I probably didn’t fully appreciate his insight when he initially dispensed it, but as it was with most inventive thoughts exchanged between a father and his son, its value became increasingly relevant as I aged. Suddenly, my crusade toward tomorrow didn’t seem too far away.
# # #
About the Author:
Michael Ciardi currently teaches 12th grade literature and creative writing at a high school in New Jersey. You may contact him via email at [email protected].
The Classic Crusade of Corbin Cobbs Page 73