by Roger Elwood
I don’t know where I am and I don’t know how I got here. I can’t remember. The cold outside is like knives. It is always white. There is no color, there is no light. There is only the pale grey of polished stone. I am curled in a cave and there are high gabled hills pressing in all around but they make me afraid and I will not look at them. I do not know how I got here. I remember something, I think, warmth, vague comforting blur, mother? wife? but I cannot remember and even as I say the terms their meaning fades. I know who I am and I know about things like that, but I find it hard to think anymore and I can’t remember.
There is nothing but white outside. A voice tells me that there is green underneath, but I think that is a dream. There are so many dreams. They get tangled sometimes and come over and over again and I can’t tell them apart. There was a fire in the valley and eyes that could not see, but I think that that was a dream. There is no valley and there is no green because I am a rock, and I have always been here, growing from the ground and dreaming of these other things. Rocks dream too much.
I always feel like crying now and I never know why. I remember that no one wanted this, but I cannot remember what this is or who the no one was. There is another voice echoing, which says everyone did want this, secretly wished for it to happen, but I don’t know what happened or why, although it makes me sad when the voice says it. I also know that the bastards can’t make me do this, and I whisper this again and again because I know it is important, although I don’t understand it, and I laugh each time I say it because I remember that it is funny, and that you’re supposed to laugh at funny things, although I don’t know why.
There was a house and bright flowers and I went to school and I played catch in the sunshine, but I know this is a dream and I wrap it in stone and smother it. There is just me and the whispers. They are trying to make me forget that I am a rock, but I will not listen. The other things are dreams and unclean.
I dreamed once about a war and an army, I think, and I say the words again but they mean nothing to me and I know urgently that they should and I try to catch it but it slips away like misty flesh. We had causes and missions and reasons, and the causes were very important, but I can’t remember them anymore because it is too cold. I remember that the causes were very important and worthwhile, but I cannot remember what they were. I cry and try to remember them so that I will know why it is always cold and I cannot get out, but they always slip away, and so maybe they aren’t that important after all. They are dreams too.
I try to remember my name and I try to say it, but my shriveled tongue gags me and all that comes out is a retching sound. I cannot remember what a name is, although I know that I must keep on trying to say it because it is important too. There are many important things and emotions and images tumbling in my mind, but they have no order and they blur and melt into each other and I cannot untangle them. They echo away into darkness before I can grasp them, and their churning hurts my mind. Rocks do not have minds, and so they should not have to have them hurt all the time. I know this is logical, although I cannot remember what logic is. Flash of a face in the mind I do not have, dissolving quickly, flesh melting into shadow, and I know that I loved her once, although I don’t know what love means.
But these are all uneasy dreams and outside. I am inside and safe. The only sound is the slow crackle of moss growing on my sides. I am a rock, and rocks should not dream.
By early spring, the thing had crawled so close that he could hear the rattle and thump of its broken wheels against the flinty ground at night, hear the ponderous scrape-slide as it dragged itself relentlessly through frozen mud toward the cave. Every night as the dying winter spiraled toward summer, he would crouch at the back of his cave and trace its jangling progress through the darkness and scream again and again, soundlessly, and only the beating pressure of his silent screams kept it from lumbering into the moonlit clearing before the cave and rolling horribly into sight, and only the mindless rhythm of his ancient, stone thoughts kept him from listening to the acid whispering of the shadows.
The snow is retreating before the sun, leaving soggy footprints, and I laugh and splash my hands delightedly in the steaming black mud outside my cave. It is early morning and the sun is trembling on the horizon. The winter is nearly over. For more than a week now I have been able to burrow beneath the wet ground uncovered by the fleeing snows, finding slugs and grubs to eat, getting my strength back. I have been ill, but now I am well. I have broken the worm behind the horizon and made him give me back the sun and I am happy. Someone once told me that God is dead, but I am not; I know because I brought back the sun.
I fumble until I find my crutch, and use it to lever myself to my feet. My bones feel as if they are made out of chalk, and I can hardly stand. I stumble from the cave, wincing at the bright sunshine, drinking the loud colors. For a moment I feel hollow and afraid, and I think that this has all happened before, but I can’t remember when. I shrug away the fear; nothing can harm me. I brought back the sun. A hawk wheels above, wings flashing in my sun, and I watch it dive.
I stumble very slowly down the sloping path away from the cave, letting my feet guide me. All around me I hear the rustle of my servants, my children, running through the bare underbrush, staying discreetly out of sight and waiting for my commands, eager to serve my will. The stark trees bow to me as I walk, waving their branches in salute. The sky arches above, clouds shifting and sculpting themselves obediently in response to my changing moods. The rocks cry out with a million joyous voices as I stride by, crushing them underfoot, and they cry louder, happy to be crushed.
I trip on the rutted path, recover my balance. I am not an ordinary man. A lesser man would have broken under the strain of winter, a lesser man would have gone insane. A lesser man would not have been able to make the worm let go of the sun. I am not an ordinary man. I am God, and God never worries about the blood under his fingernails.
The pool at the bottom of the hill is free of ice for the first time in months. I was once a rock, and rocks can drink urine and chew leather for moisture, but now I am God, and God should drink water from a pool. Laboriously, I lower myself to my good knee and bend over the pool to touch cracked lips to the water.
I jerk back in surprise and fear. There is someone in the water. I lean slowly forward again.
There is a face in the water, flickering choppily as it is rippled by tiny wavelets. The face is ancient and wrinkled, cracked by a million deep-etched lines, the flesh as stained and coarse as old leather. The hair has turned brittle and white, the luster and texture of straw. The eyes are sick, yellow and bloodstained, sunk deep into the head and smouldering hollowly. One eye has a nervous tic, which makes the face look as if it is winking obscenely at me. The teeth are rotted and black. A tangled beard, brown, streaked with white, caked with dirt and spittle, covers the neck and chin, stretching back to blend into the shaggy mane of hair. The face is almost invisible under a thick layer of grime and blood and dirt, and it looks very frightened.
I am frightened too, and angry that someone should be in my water, and I start to command it to disappear, but as I do I see its lips move too, and I watch as its lips shape the words the bastards and I hear the pull of my own voice saying the same thing, and then I know that it is me, and I scream.
I twist away from the pool, trembling, shoulders hunched against the blow that will crush me flat. Shuddering, I inch back to the lip of the pool, stretching one hand toward the face, afraid to touch it. A kind of sob snarls along the back of my throat. I trace the deep lines in my face, tug at my brittle hair. It’s only been a year, God it’s only been a year, but it’s been a crooked year and I can’t untangle the dreams.
I scream again and pound the water with my fist, scattering the face into dancing fragments, sinking it with a ring of widening ripples. I lurch to my feet and stagger away, feeling the face reforming in the water behind me, feeling it leering at my back. I will not look at it again. I will not believe it. I begin to ru
n clumsily, jolting my bad leg, thrashing my way among the naked trees. I am not so sure that I am God now, and I am beginning to be afraid again. The trees tug and snatch at me, branches raking like claws. I hear a ponderous rustle and crunch of underbrush far away, and I know it is the thing sliding down the hillside behind me, hunting me down now that I have left the sanctuary of my cave. I whine in fear, saliva gurgling in my throat.
I run faster until I break from the forest into a clearing and hit a fingering snowdrift and slam heavily into soft mud. I lay still in the sucking mud, breath whistling and rasping between my teeth. I raise my head cautiously, peering through waves of pain and a veil of hot tears. Sudden nausea and fear bite into me like talons, and I choke back the thin bile that is all I have to offer as vomit. I have returned to the battlefield.
I cower, watching my hand go forward as of its own volition and brush aside some of the snow covering the ground. The ground is still blasted and black, but now it is laced with green, new grass pushing its way hesitantly up through the barren ground. I touch the ground, feeling its wetness and chill, feeling how it dries and grows warm as the sun bakes it. The grass is vivid against the pale drabness of my skin. I wonder whether to laugh or cry. That blind life should come groping again in the wake of death is so beautiful and horrible that I cannot bear it, and I sob, grinding my forehead against the mud.
The whispers are very loud now. I cannot break out of the maze, I cannot break the circle. I cannot get out of the crooked year. None of us ever could.
My fingers brush the butt of my pistol, stroking the cool metal, and I am dimly aware that the thing and my crutch and my pistol and the bombs that raped the valley are all connected and related through some twisted corner, some crazy crossroads of the maze, all instruments fat dreaming.
The whispers are threatening to tumble into inescapable words when a long shadow falls over me and I hear a heavy body force its way from the forest behind me.
My scream tears the tattered fabric of the world, ripping my throat raw. It is the thing looming over me to crush me grind me smother me, absorbing me tracelessly into its broken iron body. The shadow swells, blotting out the sun. I scream and scream, feeling bones crack, muscles pull tight, my taut body arch they are coming to get me they are coming to get me they are coming to get me and the pistol is in my hand and it explodes again and again and I am screaming and I hear something else scream faraway and the pistol roars and the echoes wash through the sleepy morning and the pistol clicks and the pistol clicks and it is empty.
I drop the pistol and I am on my feet screaming and trying to run, but I do not see them, and I do not see the thing. There is only a dirty bundle of rags crumpled on the ground a few feet away.
I stop screaming. The silence is loud.
I moan nervously and stumble forward, dropping to my knees. The bundle of rags is a human figure, lying on its back, staring blindly toward the rising sun. There is fresh blood welling through the tattered uniform. It is the enemy.
I watch as the enemy’s lips writhe and twist, bubbling, and then grow still. How long has it been since I’ve heard a human voice, and how long will it be now? Hesitantly I touch the enemy’s face; his flesh is already growing cold. His face is dirty and battered and frightened. It looks a lot like the face in the water. It is slowly smoothing, relaxing into death. I didn’t mean it, I didn’t want to do it, and I know that I am lying and I sob. I touch the enemy’s callused hands with a callused finger.
I try to turn into a rock and find that I can’t anymore. But I think that I can see my flesh starting to fade, losing color and becoming transparent, and I know that I may soon be permanently invisible. I am crying, and tears cut channels through the grime of my face, and I cry for me, and for everybody and everything. I cock my head and listen to the greedy silence and feel for a heartbeat. There is none. My hands are covered with blood. I am alone. I try unconsciously to wipe the blood off on my pants, on the new grass.
The whispers have taken flesh. They are very loud and bright, and they roll in letters of marching fire and iron through my mind. I know what they want, and I know why. I have found the one responsible, the one who has to pay. I am very tired. I grope for the pistol, lift it from the dew-wet grass. I cradle the pistol in my lap and begin to load it. There is one way out of the maze, one way to break the circle. It’s the way that has always existed, the way of love, of empathy.
As I lift the pistol, I reach over with my free hand and close the enemy’s staring eyes, gently brush the hair back from his forehead. My heart swells with tenderness and sorrow, and a certain strange exultation. I press the cold muzzle against my temple. There are all kinds of love.
The sun rose hot and clear that morning, and a flock of returning birds sang it a hymn of beating wings and liquid exultation. The sky was a pale fresh blue and it was filled with sprawling, fluffy clouds that flamed into molten gold when the sun burrowed among them. Far away, a hawk screamed at the morning. It was going to be a beautiful day.