Delivering Virtue

by Brian Kindall

  “Little Oiseau,” I sang to myself. “Petit Birdy.”

  I found myself imagining what it might feel like to be up there so high, just flapping around in the stars over the dark and slumbering frontier. My mind plucked out and I fancied myself peering down on my dearest Turtle Dove as she sat with Virtue by the campfire. For some reason lost to me, the image made me in turns immeasurably happy, profoundly miserable, and then, again, immeasurably happy. Life, at times, can flop back and forth that way.

  Then I discovered in myself a longing to join the very picture I was observing down below. This was simple enough, I realized, as I was not truly soaring overhead with the owl, but just squatting on a log. I had only to stand, walk over to the camp, and reconvene with the girls.

  “First stand,” I told myself.

  I did, but I do not recall hearing my voice commanding me to take anymore of the steps required to get from one place to the next. And yet there now I was.

  Turtle Dove and Virtue both looked up at me, expectantly.

  I gazed down at them, hovering, an irrepressible grin spreading over my face.

  “Qu-est que c’est?” asked my Dove.

  Her voice was like silence mixed with music.

  It stirred in me a passion – a tremor of joy and anticipation in the corresponding regions of my heart, my solar plexus, and also in that area farther down.

  “Nothing,” I finally answered. “Rien.” And then, in a fit of unanticipated inspiration, I blurted, “I think I will now write some verse!”

  The girls stared at me blankly. Puck snorted from the edge of the darkness. They were all by now a tad weary of my attempts to bring ink and paper to any partnership for the sake of a beauteous and cadenced expression. And so I suppose they were less than impressed with my bold declaration. Still, Virtue smiled reassuringly.

  “Good for you,” she said. “Have fun.”

  Turtle Dove only shrugged, and gave me an indifferent nod.

  This small measure of encouragement was enough to put a lift in my already elevated spirits, and so I turned decisively on my boot heel, strode back to my saddlebags, and found my paper pad and ink and pen. Yes, I confess, for good measure I took one more sip from the flask, although it was exceedingly small in quantity, barely a taste, truly. My thinking was that I did not dare let my shinbone start up hurting while I was in the throes of poetic composition, and the tonic seemed my greatest insurance that such an interruption would be kept at bay.

  “Medicine,” I whispered.

  NIPPLE, I SOON DISCOVERED, is an exceedingly difficult word for which to find an appropriate rhyme.

  Of course, Ripple came to mind almost at once, but by no way I turned it could I find any eloquent way to make a nipple ripple.

  No doubt the motivation for such a beginning to my poem came from the scene playing out before me. Turtle Dove had pulled down her top, and was giving Virtue her evening allowance of milk. One envied them their intimate connection – that mother-child bond that is like no other. Virtue knelt on the ground beside her nursemaid, leaning over her front, her hand steadying her against Turtle Dove’s upper thigh. They were so innocent and open about their task. So Sapphic. Never mind that Virtue had moved beyond infancy and was now a girl. Never mind that I, with thirsts of my own, was observing them in full view.

  Turtle Dove’s eyes fell on mine. They twinkled with firelight. She did not turn away, but held perfectly still. It was as if she were a detailed part of a bigger picture, fixed in a timeless application of paint, and would be looking out for generations to come at any viewer who passed, reminding them always, through subtle aide-memoire, of some inexpressible thing they had lost along the way.

  I grew unexpectedly warm, and quickly, before I forgot what I was up to, tugged open the collar of my shirt, letting out some steam, and jotted both Nipple and Ripple at the bottom of the page, thinking I would work them in as my poem progressed.

  I then endeavored to continue writing. I was out of practice, and it proved most difficult. My mind would not let go of the thought of Turtle Dove watching me, muse-like, as I wrote, and with her quintessence so fully ensconced in my mind, I penned the line – “Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky, like…”

  But I stopped right there.

  I lifted the pen from the parchment.

  Now perhaps it was only a side effect brought on by the medicine I had earlier self-administered, but I realized a sensation that I had, on past occasions, felt before – once when I was a lad with a poem about a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain, and another time later on with a poem about two roads diverging in a yellowed wood. It is difficult to explain the sensation with any clarity, as it is mysterious and vague and somewhat disturbing. It was something like discovering that you are walking with one foot in a dream. But this was no ordinary dream; this was a dream belonging to someone who had not yet been born. And although we are all God’s creatures, and no doubt connected in cosmic ways we cannot fathom as mortals, this particular sensation felt to be aberrant and distressing.

  It is common, and perhaps inevitable, that a poet will lift lines and even whole stanzas from other versifiers in history. For the ever-rising temple of Poesy is surely built on the ink-soaked foundations laid down by those who came before us. And it could even be argued that certain holy books are, in fact, nothing more than restructurings of the dusty myth-laden epics of the foggy past. But to borrow from the unlived future seemed wrongful in ways that felt akin to playing God. One sensed Mephistopheles lurking in the shadows. There were some things that just should not be done, some lines that should never be crossed. And although I had most certainly stepped over more than one doubtful line in my life, this was the one Thou Shalt Not above all others that I refused to transgress. Such far-reaching necromantic plagiarism seemed similar to bringing forth a babe before it had fully ripened in the wellspring of the womb. How could such a fragile, par-souled being – be it a poem or a child – ever survive in the harshness of this waking life? Such creatures born ahead of their time are most assuredly doomed from the start.

  But alas, this additional stricture on the free-flow of my syncopated musings only caused me more angst. How would I ever build a living, breathing poem of my own with all these rules circling round in my head?

  “Maybe I just need to stretch my legs,” I told myself, “And then perhaps the mind will follow.”

  I left Turtle Dove and Virtue to their business, and strolled about the camp, taking a circuitous route through the willows that led me inevitably to the log with my saddlebags.

  As I walked, I happened upon a thought about the great poet Coleridge, and specifically about his poem Kubla Khan. It is widely understood among fellow poets that this masterwork was composed while its creator was in the throes of an opium-induced reverie. I had no opium.

  “But,” I whispered, as I pulled the flask from its hiding place, “I do have you.”

  I uncorked the canister once more, and said, “Merely a splash to oil the rusted cog-works of my mind.” And then I tipped back and let a long draught of the liquid burn a stream of fire down my throat.

  I replaced the flask, stood, wavered for a moment, steadied myself with a hand against the log, and then went back to my waiting paper and pen.

  The word Tipple came to me as I walked, and I was most exhilarated at the thought of my opium substitute doing such good work on my poetic behalf. I quick wrote down the word Tipple next to Ripple and Nipple.

  Virtue was finished with nursing, and as the evening was getting late, she decided to ready herself for bed. She brushed out her hair, while talking quietly with Turtle Dove.

  I blinked and swallowed and struggled to rhyme something – anything – with something else.

  Virtue came over when she was finished grooming. She had wound her hair into a long braid and tied it with a ribbon.

  “Goodnight,” she said, and reached out to me with her hand.

  I lifted my own hand
and took hold of hers. She gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. I cannot express how happy that made me. Then she turned and went to the far corner of the camp where there was a shallow compression in the grass where she and Turtle Dove had a Buffalo robe spread out with some blankets.

  “Pleasant dreams,” I called.

  And then she sank down into the shadows.

  The horses were snoozing on the perimeter.

  Turtle Dove and I were left alone.

  IT WAS THERE AND then, sous les étoiles, on that wild American frontier, with my own true love so picturesquely sorting herbs before me, that Bacchus saw fit to fling open the floodgates of poesy.

  I fairly swooned at the rush of inspiration that so swiftly inundated my being.

  My vision momentarily blurred.

  I caught my breath.

  But then, with my pen loaded up with ink, I set to work on my poem.

  Oh, what a splendorous feeling to be once again composing!

  The words flowed flowingly and flowingly flowed like a springtide freshet born from the lofty bosom of the mountains – twisting and undulating here – making a bend in a rhythm there – plashing headlong ever faster in a froth and forward tremulously onward. And I – I was but carried along – a gleeful bard of a boy abob on a musical gush of verbalistic flotsam.

  Oh!

  And oh!

  *****

  When I was finished, I did not bother to reread what I had written. Instead, with confidence, I placed my pen and paper to the side, and leaned back, somewhat spent. My head was spinning. A ringing sounded in my ears. I silently burped up a sulfurous and licorice posset that burnt the inside of my nostrils. I swallowed and sniffed.

  Turtle Dove was on the other side of the flames, gathering up the bowls and spoons and knives from our supper. She stacked the bowls together, one inside the next. She tossed a bit of uneaten biscuit into the fire, and then, without glancing my way, went off with the dishes through the trees toward the pool.

  Now I have always been especially proud of my ability to interpret the nuances and mannerisms that so often elude non-speakers of a language – and I was feeling like a true master of words, even those unsaid. (Had I not just displayed a most impressive lingual dexterity with my poem?) And although understated, I took Turtle Dove’s gestures for their secret meaning. “Come hither,” she was most assuredly saying. “Follow me now into the shadows.”

  “Oh, Rain,” I whispered. “Opportunity hath knocked sweetly upon thy garden gate.”

  And then, nervous as a youth, I hurried over and took one final drink from the flask, draining its contents in an effort to embolden myself for the interaction I sensed upcoming.

  I then shuffled off toward the pool, falling only twice. My eyes had not yet adjusted to the darkness into which I entered, and the way was strewn with branches and holes and various other obstacles placed between my love and myself.

  *****

  As I neared the clearing, I moved more slowly, and with more stealth. The stream babbled loudly enough to cover the sound of my footfalls. I crept closer, positioning myself behind a tree trunk, until Turtle Dove was only a single rod away. I could see her there now, kneeling on the bank, the starlight faintly illuminating her buxom feminine figure as she went about scrubbing out the bowls. The stars reflected in the pool, and it was difficult to tell where the sky stopped and the water began, as each one seemed to be a deliquesced extension of the other.

  Turtle Dove hummed an Indian song as she worked. Primal and holy. It resonated in the deepest chambers of my heart, moving me to a great emotion. I was on the verge of joyful tears. I could have waited there behind that tree for all of eternity, so pristine was that teetering moment of anticipation. But then Turtle Dove did something that prompted the moment forward. She laid the bowls and utensils to the side. She slipped down the top of her buckskin dress, freeing her arms and shoulders of its encumbrance. And then, cupping a handful of water from the pool, she began to wash her breasts.

  I took one step and fell.

  “Umph!”

  Turtle Dove spun and jumped to her feet.

  She stood on the bank, covering herself with her arms.

  I scrambled to my knees, and then, still on all fours, craned up at her. She was like something from a Botticelli, with the heavens as backdrop to her angelicism. I hesitated, but then, gathering myself, I mustered a composure worthy of my station.

  “Excusez-moi,” I said. “Uh… Bonsoir.”

  Turtle Dove did not at first reply. She feigned surprise, and I found myself all the more attracted to her for her courtly play at coyness.

  I struggled to stand, and finally did. Although my fall had jarred me somewhat, causing me to feel a dizziness that resulted in a clumsy sidestep jig. I held my arms out to my sides for balance.

  Turtle Dove stared at me. I could not clearly see her expression. I squinted at her face, but I could not clearly see her smile in the near darkness.

  “Qu-est que vous voulez?” she asked.

  Yes, I thought. Good question. What do I want? Simple things. A small rain coming down. Beauty. Peace. Paradise.

  “Un peu du lait,” I said at last. The request surprised even me. It felt as if a part of myself unbeknownst to me had uttered its truest desire.

  Turtle Dove did not move.

  I stepped forward, and gestured with my open hand for her to sit on the ground. “Just a taste,” I said. “S’il vous plait.”

  It was impossible to know what was going on inside the woman’s head. One could speculate that she was intrigued, excited, even eager. But, of course, one could not be certain. They are a mysterious sex. At any rate, after some moments of deliberation, she complied with my first wish that she sit in the grass by the pool. I knelt beside her.

  I felt like a neophyte suitor hoping to get a first kiss. Uncertain. Sheepish. But subject to a great and overriding thirst.

  To ease her discomfiture, I spoke soothingly, as a friend. “It is a lovely night,” I said with casualness. “The stars are watching us. It reminds me very much of the nocturnal scene from my old dream – the very one in which you and I met before.”

  I searched the shadows of her face, looking for some indication of recollection. But she remained charmingly aloof, her arms still crossed over her chest. The stream plinked and clinked along the edges of the pool. The world seemed to have picked up speed in its spinning. Time felt to be running out, like an upturned bottle emptying of its contents.

  I nodded toward her, and boldly laid my hand on her arm. “Permettez-moi?”

  She drew back, half turning away, but when I pulled gently on her wrist, she did not resist too forcefully, and finally opened herself up to me.

  I wet my lips with my tongue. Then, in the very manner I had observed Virtue doing the same, I leaned forward, rested my hand on Turtle Dove’s thigh, and took suck.

  HER MILK MADE ME drunk.

  With wistfulness.

  With adoration.

  With a wakened desire the power of which I did not know I had in me.

  Her sweetness stirred in me the queerest sensation. It was all joy and confusion, misery and hope. It was wild birds soaring on the wind; it was snow falling along invisible mountaintops. It was my childhood played out all over again in an instant – toys strewn on the floor, a lullaby sung softly at bedtime. It was sounds in the rainy street. Quiet laughter in the shadows. The clop of hooves. A moan, a whimper, and a scream. The dolorous clamor of bells in chorus with the eternal wash and hiss of the sea. It was truly a thousand things – the myriad jetsam of one’s life – all coming together now in a single wave of longing.

  “Oh, Dove,” I said at last, wiping my mouth on my sleeve.

  To live!

  To feel!

  To love!

  And Oh! – to be loved in return.

  “…behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains… skipping upon the hills.”

  I pressed her down into the grass, knocking over the freshly w
ashed stack of bowls.

  “Non!” she called.

  “Oui.”

  (For a wise man once assured me that No, when translated from the language of a woman’s heart, inevitably comes back around to meaning Yes.)

  She struggled, out of obligation, I suppose. Could I have respected her so much had she not?

  I held her wrists. “I am Syatapis,” I said. “I am your man.”

  I pressed a gentle kiss onto her parted lips, and then took her hand and held it over my tattoo.

  “And you,” I told her. “You are my bride.”

  Her startled eyes sparkled with glints of stellar light, and then closed.

  She let go of a deep deep sigh.

  I heard the owl pass low over the pool, its beak clicking.

  After that, she remained still and silent throughout.

  WHEN I WAS A boy, and still in short pants, it was my daily habit to fling a dozen stones into the sea. I would wait for low tide, and toss one as far as I could, out beyond the waves. I would watch it splash in the sea foam, and then close my eyes, imagining it sinking away and away into the briny depths. Sometimes that stone dropped down through a school of little yellow fish, scattering them like flecks of sunlight. At other times, it bounced and rolled off the back of a silent leviathan cruising in that somnolent underworld. But always, before the first stone hit bottom, I would toss the next, repeating the procedure until my twelve stones were spent.

  I had it in my mind that I was part of a sequence – a series of boys stretching from Adam all the way on up to some distant time in the future – and that we were all in league, over the generations, in a common effort to fill up the sea with stones. Someday, ages hence, some yet-to-be-born boy would be granted the privilege of tossing that last stone. The process would be complete. Then all we boys – ghosts of the past, standing shoulder to shoulder – would have completed our task. The continents would be joined. The Old World and the New would be a single contiguous mass.