When at last the seizures and sickness have passed, the man rolls over onto his back. The barber moves him away from the trench, into the cool grass of the field. For several minutes the man simply lies there, pulling in ragged, phlegm-filled breaths, his chest rising and falling rapidly at first, and then slowing, slowing, until he is once again breathing freely and easily. He opens his eyes and stares at the barber.
“You opened your eyes, didn’t you?” asks the barber.
“Christ Almighty … what is that thing?”
“I’m not completely sure,” replies the barber. “It might have been a worm, or a toad, a snake, it might even have been a duckling or a piglet or a club-footed calf for all I know. Whatever it was, it’s now something beyond this world but trapped in it. It lives on disease, it craves disease, it gorges itself on disease. Parts of it are capable of moving out the pit, but not very far. It’s become so distended and bloated by all it’s consumed over the centuries that its legs are useless. And I am charged with keeping it alive by feeding it death.”
The man does not react; instead, he reaches out and the barber helps him to sit up. The man simply stares at the barber, waiting.
“My name was Jacob Sprenger. I was a witch-finder—I was, in fact, a Witchfinder General. I was known as ‘Jacob the Shorner.’ When interrogating accused witches, I tried not to resort to the more brutal forms of torture—at least, for a while. I was content to obtain confessions by simply shaving all the hair from an accused witch’s body. After a while, I became aroused by their terror, and then intoxicated by their cries for mercy and, toward the end, addicted to the pain in their faces as I ordered them to the rack, or burned them with a blacksmith’s searing iron, or ….” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. There are some sins too horrible, too monstrous, for remorse.
“I married a woman as pious as I, and together we traveled the land, trying the accused who were already condemned before their trials began.” He looks at the tree that has now returned to its previous state—just an old, twisted tree in the middle of a field. “One day, there was a trial of three sisters in a village filled with heat of rampant fanaticism. I know now that those three women were innocent; they were simply healers whose methods were so foreign to the villagers that it seemed like dark magic. Rye was consumed frequently in this village, rye infected with ergot. The villagers were not content with simple torture; they demanded execution.
“Just before they were killed by the hangman’s noose, the eldest of the three—a girl no more than sixteen—looked at my wife and myself with deep, deep pity. ‘You may never gain our forgiveness, but perhaps you will learn and accept the price of your mistakes. For all of eternity, you both shall always remember … remember … remember ….’
“I was foolish enough to think that my wife and I could escape their power, but I was wrong. And so this is, for lack of a better word, my penance. All the pain and horror I inflicted on so many innocent people … I have to make amends. This is how I try, and how I will continue to try until the day they might choose to forgive me and allow my wife and I to pass from this earthly realm into whatever Paradise or damnation awaits us.
“My wife and I are nearly four hundred years old. Immortality is, eventually, a form of damnation. But I have my wife, I have her undying love, and I have my shop, my regulars who are all my friends. I have their company, and their laughter, and the stories they tell. How do you feel?”
The man seems surprised by the question. At first he only opens his mouth to find no words will emerge; then he takes a deep breath—perhaps the deepest breath he’s taken in months, even years—and stands up without the barber’s assistance. He touches his head to find the scabs have disappeared. His touches his throat, his chest, his groin. “I … I feel … okay, maybe not great, but … better. A hell of a lot better.”
The barber rises to his feet. “And you’ll continue to feel better. Go see your oncologist this week and watch as his or her jaw hits the floor after running what I’m sure will be a battery of tests. It is gone. You are clean. The rest of your life awaits you. By the way,” says the barber, lighting a fresh cigarette, “you’re now a regular. Once your hair grows back in a few weeks, come and see me for a trim.”
“A little off the top?”
“A little off the top.”
The man points toward the barber’s cigarette. “Those damn things’ll kill you, you know.”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
And both men laugh; perhaps there is more genuine mirth in one’s laugh than the other but it’s of no consequence now; they are enjoying each other’s company, and that is, for the moment, enough.
Final Concerns.
There is not much more to our story, a story the barber has lived many times before and will continue to live many times more. The man returned home alive and better. His wife wept and kissed him and held him and thanked Who- or Whatever there was out there in the universe for making this possible; she gave thanks for the night, and for the day and days that followed. And there were so many, many days that followed.
The barber welcomed a new regular several weeks later, and like the other men who patronize the shop, he found himself welcome. He brought his laughter, and his friendship, and his stories.
But we mustn’t leave just yet. We find ourselves drawn back to the tree in its field, and the trench surrounding it. We wait, we watch, and we listen. Something is scratching at the wall of the trench, something small but determined. For a moment, the sound stops, then whatever is trying to climb out resumes its efforts with more determination.
A few moments later, a brown tabby cat claws its way over the edge and back onto solid ground. It sits, grooms itself for a bit, and then, on strong legs that carry a now-slightly rotund body, strolls off into the night, perhaps, we hope, to find someone who will show it kindness, give it a little food, maybe a new home.
And we smile, turning away from the tree, as the first dim rays of sunlight begin to bleed across the horizon. The night is finished, as is our story.
Tales the Ashes Tell
Introduction by Graham Masterton
Lyrical, intense and moving, Gary Braunbeck’s “Tales the Ashes Tell” is told from a highly unusual point of view. He shows that the value of human life is its variety, and that the real horror is its brevity, and is sadness. A deeply affecting story that breaks all the so-called “rules of writing” – but that’s what makes the difference between a good writer and an inspired writer. Gary Braunbeck is an inspired writer.
Tales the Ashes Tell
I was in the darkness;
I could not see my words
Nor the wishes of my heart.
Then suddenly there was a great light—
“Let me into the darkness again.”
—Stephen Crane
Some nights, when the visitors have left and everything within me falls into dismal silence, when even the Librarian grows weary of drifting through these halls, maintaining these chambers, and looking at these glass doors behind which rest the golden books, when the rain spatters against the roof and the flashes of lightning create glinting reflections swimming against my marble floors, when I am at last certain there will be no one and nothing to disturb me, I allow myself, for a little while, to flip through these books as one still among the living would flip through the pages of an old family photo album; only where the living warm themselves in the nostalgic glow of reminiscences, I sustain myself on the memories of those housed within the books arranged on my shelves, behind my glass doors with their golden hinges, here in my corridors with marble floors. I have no memories, being born of wood, iron, and stone as I was. But those who slumber here, within these golden books, their memories remain with them, and many are so lonely that they gladly share them with me on nights such as this. I house them from the elements; they sustain me with their stories. I prefer it this way, on nights such as this, when it is just the ashes, the rain, and I … and the tales th
e ashes tell.
Tonight it’s old Mrs. Winters who’s the first to start in with her story of her grandson’s death in Vietnam and how it broke her own son’s heart and led to the ruination of his marriage and career, ending when her son took his own life in a squalid motel room somewhere in Indiana. Every time she tells this story, her neighbors listen quietly, politely, patiently, for they—like I—have heard this a thousand times before, but she always changes some small detail so it’s never quite the same; tonight, the scene of his death is not some sleazy roadside hovel but an expensive, five-star hotel in the middle of downtown Manhattan, and this time her son does not decorate the blinds with his brains but instead stands on the roof of the palace, arms spread wide, a joyous smile on his face as he falls forward off the edge and for a moment almost flies until he … doesn’t.
Like her neighbors I am pleased by this new trick of the tale. Each time she changes a bit of the minutiae the story resembles itself less and less, and one night it will be a completely new story that she will begin revising almost immediately. We like this about her. She was never married, our Mrs. Winters. She had no children. She died alone, on a bus-stop bench, a forgotten bag lady whose mortal remains were cremated and placed here by a sympathetic police officer who still comes by once a month to bring flowers and pay his respects; it seems Mrs. Winters reminded him of his own grandmother; beyond that, no one here has any further idea of his reasons, and if Mrs. Winters knows of them, her memory is too fragmented to know for certain if those reasons are true or not. We do not press the matter. Even here, certain privacies are respected.
I find it curious, how many of her neighbors were interred here by strangers, or family members they were never particularly close to. Many of them come here from cities and towns that are hundreds—sometimes thousands—of miles away. I know that I am a glorious edifice, and am honored that so many of the living wish to bring their loved ones here to rest. I am a tranquil place, a quiet place, a place of serenity and sanctuary. I know all of the stories of nearly everyone who slumbers here, but not all.
Tonight, we have new neighbors on my shelves, behind my glass doors. I heard only a part of the explanation given by the slightly hunched, spirit-broken man who brought them here. Something about his brother and his niece and a boy his niece once knew. I wonder whom it is he has left with us. I exchange pleasantries with all my friends between the golden covers of their books, and as I do each of them asks, What do you know about the new arrival? I have no answer for them, not yet, but being the curious sorts they are—and always so lonely, even when all of them are chattering away—they want me to find out but are too polite to ask. They know they don’t need to; I will discover it in time.
I see that the glass doors have been freshly washed and dried so that our new arrival is welcomed into a clean space. She is whispering to herself, our new neighbor, and I become very still, empyrean, allowing the rain and lighting and the slow turning of the Earth to cast shapes of angels in the Primum Mobile of night.
She speaks not of herself, but of we, of the uncle who brought us here.
Could it be? There are so few books here that contain more than a single person’s remains; the last was five years ago, when an elderly husband and wife who died within hours of each other left specific instructions that they were to be burned and interred together, their ashes, like their souls (or so they believed), intermingled for eternity. I find that sort of sentimentality pitiful, but I never speak my judgment to those who need to believe in such antiquated notions. Do not misunderstand—the souls of that elderly couple are intermingled here, but not in the way they were raised to believe; there are no fields of green they run through, hand in hand, laughing as the afternoon sun sets their faces aglow and the scent of autumn leaves fills the air. They are simply here, and so shall remain. But it is enough for them, this fate, and that pleases me.
The girl still speaks of we and us, very seldom does the word I make an appearance. At least not at first.
I’m here, I tell her or them. As are we all, and we are all listening.
She continues to whisper, but whether she is telling the story to me or to those who live inside my walls, I do not yet know. But she tells her story as if she has told it a thousand times before and expects to tell it a thousand times again; and, perhaps, like old Mrs. Winters, she will begin altering details as the years and decades and centuries go by, until it is a new story, one she finds can spend eternity with and not be crippled with regret.
Mute, voiceless, abandoned and all but forgotten, she begins, my father’s house does not so much sit on this street as it does crouch; an abused, frightened animal fearing the strike of its keeper’s belt, the sting of a slapping hand, the rough kick of a steel-toed boot. No lights shine in any of the windows, which are broken or have been covered with boards or black paint or large sections of cardboard that now stink of dampness and rot. The paint on the front door long ago gave up fighting the good fight and now falls away, peeled by unseen hands, becoming scabs dropping from the body of a leper in the moments before death, but with no Blessed Damien of Molokai to offer up a final prayer for a serene passage from this cheerless existence into the welcoming forgiveness and saving grace of Heaven. This was once a house like any other house, on this street like any other street, in this town that most people would immediately recognize and then just as quickly forget as they drive through it on their way to someplace more vibrant, more exciting, or even just a little more interesting.
But we can’t blame them, you and I; we can’t impugn these people who pass through without giving this place so much as a second glance. If things had worked out differently, we would have burned rubber on our way out, making damn sure the tires threw up enough smoke to hide any sight of the place should one of us cave and glance in the rear-view for a final look, a last nostalgic image of this insufficient and unremarkable white-bread Midwestern town, but that’s not the way it works around here; never was, never will be. You’re born here, you’ll die here; you’re a lifer, dig it or not.
We sometimes wonder if people still use that phrase, dig it, or if it’s also passed into the ether of the emptiness people still insist on calling history, memory, eternity, whatever, passed into that void along with groovy, outta sight, “That’s not my bag,” “Stifle it, Edith,” Watergate, Space-Food Sticks, platform shoes, Harry Chapin flying in his taxi, and the guy who played Re-Run on What’s Happening?
Wouldn’t it be nice if that drunken Welshman’s poems had been true, that death has no dominion, or that we could rage against the dying of the light? Odd. It occurs to me that if we were still alive, we’d be looking right into face of our fifties about now, feeling its breath on our cheeks, its features in detail so sharp it would be depressing.
But this never does us any good, does it, thinking about such things? Especially tonight of all nights. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten? Yes, that’s right. This night marks the anniversary of the night my father buried us under the floorboards in my bedroom after he came home early from work and caught us in my bed. It was my first time, and when he saw you there, with his little girl, it was too much for him to take; not this, not this dirty, filthy thing going on under his roof, it was too much; his wife was gone, three years in her grave after twice as long fighting the cancer that should have taken her after nine months; his job was gone, the factory doors closed forever, and he was reduced to working as a janitor at the high school just to keep our heads above water because the severance pay from the plant was running out.
“At least the house is paid for,” he’d say on those nights when there was enough money to buy a twelve-pack of Blatz, sit at the kitchen table, and hope with every tip of every can that some of his shame and grief and unhappiness would be pulled out in the backwash.
You never saw it, you never had the chance, you didn’t know him as I did. I couldn’t look at his eyes and all the broken things behind them any longer; I couldn’t listen to his once booming voice
that was now a disgraced whisper, the death-rattle of a life that was a life no longer, merely an existence with no purpose at its center…except for his little girl, except for me and all the unrealized dreams he hoped I’d bring to fruition because he no longer had the faith or the strength to fight for anything. A hollow, used-up, brittle-spirited echo of the man he’d hoped to be. Even then, even before that night, he’d ceased to be my father; he became instead what was left of him. I tried to fill in the gaps with my memories of what was, what had been, but I was a teen-aged girl, one who hadn’t paid any attention to him during the six years my mother was dying, and so I made up things to fill in those holes. I pretended that he was a Great War Hero who was too modest to boast about his accomplishments on the battlefield; I dreamt that he was a spy, like Napoleon Solo on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., hiding undercover, using his factory job to establish his secret identity, his mission one so secret that he couldn’t even reveal the truth to his family; I imagined that he was writing the Great American Novel in hidden notebooks late at night, while I slept in my room with the Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy posters on the walls, their too-bright smiles hinting that some day soon my father’s novel would make him so rich and famous that the two of them would be arguing over who would take me to Homecoming, and who would take me to the prom.
Halfway Down the Stairs Page 32