Blues of Summer -- Once a Parody Mustapha Mond
Note: I honestly thought I was done with this one, folks. I thought, that story is my past -- it will die unfinished. And I don't lie when I say that BOS seemed at times a chore, at others a burden. If you've never written a story in first-person present tense, I suggest you refrain from it, and maintain your sanity.
Having said that, as college takes on more and more of the same, and I just drift along, unconnected to people at any great length, I find myself yearning for the simple tale of Derrick and love. Despite the mediocre prose I barely manage to churn out and my obvious lack of any serious logic and rhetoric training, I can't help but feel some element of purity to BOS. Maybe you had to be there, I dunno. But there's something there... something with an old flavor, something I haven't tasted in a long time. This is nostalgia I'm talking about. I'm 20 and already walk in nostalgia. Could this be a product of growing up to fast? This is not the place for social deconstruction -- I want simply to say, Derrick reminds me of an old friend I never quite had, or perhaps my love from a dream; he is both me and my idealized self; I read him with both joy and sadness. He gives me hope for a better life (even if he hasn't reached it himself), and he gives me sorrow that mine is not more. Even though he is so personal to me, I see in him the power of all true fiction in my simultaneous reactions...I hope some of you out there may glimpse what I see, here or elsewhere, in these little stories we write to lost youth and held hopes, all smiles and tears.
Having ranted, I should add, it has been a while, and this section takes up rather abruptly. If you don't have the time or desire to reread from the beginning, section 4 is a good place to start refreshing your memory.
VI)
We leave Shark and Dalton at the campsite, still fussing with the stakes and poles and strings that might, on some distant day, compose a tent. Believe it or not, of us four all-American lads, none were ever boy scouts; my suspicion is, however, that our parents -- put simply, atheists and Jews -- always found the whole operation a little too "fascist" for their tastes. Of course, Tad, the woodsman, is more than capable of throwing a tent up blindfolded, but the others wanted a challenge. So off we are, on the search for firewood (which, let's face it, is just an excuse to go romp around).
"This was the best idea I've ever heard in my life," I say, and I mean it. Here we are: the woods! It is one of those perfect mid-afternoons that you find in the summer like flecks of mica in the sand -- shining, brilliant, glorious; the sun slants through dry leaves made translucent, emerald green. Up in the mountains the air is so clear it cuts through some film on my lungs. Who would have thought paradise blossomed a mere two hours from home?
"Well, I just thought it might be nice after that party," Tad says. "When you put urbanity and nature back to back, life tends to take a more harmonic flow. And look at this! Can you see why I don't go to movies often?"
Through the breaks in the canopy we spy the mountains rising again on the far side of the narrow valley, weary and comforting. These are not the soaring spires of the Rockys, but ancient mounds of soft dirt, worn by the wind of eons. Theirs is a majesty of being outside time. They are dappled with light green, darker patches of firs, and occasional jutting stone. Rising far above, the sun, nowhere near the lip of the ridge but definitely sunk past its apex. The rays hitting my face in patchwork are still warm and wonderful.
"Is this a different world?" I ask. "I feel like I could float. I feel like...isn't there something here? Something big and whole that could just swallow us up into it?"
"I feel that way a lot," Tad says. Now and again he scoops down to pick up a piece of dry wood. "Cities...well, cities were built by the hands of man, but we were built by all this. It's easy to get swallowed up in it all -- it's bigger than us by a billion fold."
And yet there are the small things, and I wonder at them, just as I had yesterday, waking from my sleep. The earth is alive with motion. Vibrant motion; a black and red millipede runs silently on its thousand legs beneath a fallen shelf of bark. Out of the corner of my eye I note him, just as the squirrels crash unseen through underbrush down the slope. Tad -- his bare arms, small beads of sweat caught in the brown hair. We glide with an unspoken poetry in our steps. I feel clumsy: this is not my element. But Tad moves with the sure footing of a deer. Like some gangly weed, bent beneath the eaves of a steel roof, all it takes are sunshine and air, fresh ground, to stand up straight.
We crest one final rise and stop in our tracks, faces burning with pure childish delight. See here, see here! Here a hidden brook winds across the mountain top, where the slope flattens off, dug deep into the soil over millennia. Somewhere, not far off, it must gurgle up from the ground, bursting like some buried secret into the open light, at a spring of clear, clean pools. The bed sinks some thirty feet into the earth, ten feet across at its widest point; although we could pass it by scrambling down among rough slabs of sandstone, gripping at naked roots as we went, we see the only real way. An ancient oak, so thick it seems pregnant with years, has fallen across the span. I feel something almost magical in the precise way it bridges the two shores; a butterfly, far from the open meadows and sun-dewed blossoms, slowly spreads its wings on the tallest knot; this -- I think -- hints at something more than mundane reality.
I go first. The bark is taut and true, the log does not sway to my motions, or with the soft wind.
"You got it okay?" Tad asks.
"Course. It's like walking, only halfway sitting down. Best feeling in the world."
I reach the middle and look to my side. Not far from the log, the canal deepens and widens after a sudden drop (sweet music in my ears -- water falling, pitter-pattering on slimy rocks); beyond this point, the near invisible stream opens into a creek, met perhaps by other tributaries, off down the slope of the mountains. I have a phenomenal view as the trees recede from the water, leaving a channel of open blue sky directly in front of me, farther, the top of the dry canopy. It is breathtaking. I swing my legs over the side and sit upright, just looking.
"You still okay?" Tad says. From the far bank I hear a note of concern. I look at him, my teeth flashing in an unselfconscious smile.
"You won't believe this," I say. "This has to be seen. You're right -- I may never look at a movie the same way again."
In two blinks he is next to me. Our feet dangle into nothing. We sit there, leaning back on our arms just enough, spaced apart enough to be apart, but comfortable. The sun, now at our side, brushes against my eyelids and sends a halo over my kneecaps, bare and a little scraped. And again, below, the soft music of water sliding toward its home.
"Great idea," I say at last. "Back in town, I'd probably be just waking up now, maybe bitterly masturbating. Just some time for the four of us -- that is, if Dalton and Shark haven't managed to impale each other on the tent stakes."
Tad laughs, not like the usual self-conscious titters I hear from him. This is full, echoing roundly off the trees and mountains.
"They're good guys," he says. "Funny how I didn't even know them till you introduced us all. At a party, no less. Up until then, I just thought they were more of that trendy-punkish off-popular crowd; getting their cool through pretending to be rebels and making none-too-clever cracks at the backs of my ilk."
"What makes you think that's not them exactly?" I ask. We both laugh again. Our two voices, overlapped, have a warmer tone than his alone.
"Seriously, though, you don't know how happy I was that you guys hit it off so well. Just one of those silly assumptions, you know, that just cause I'm friends with all these people they'd make good friends to each other. Guess that time I got it right."
"Yeah. I always have a good time, but I honestly don't really hang out with them when you're not around. Guess I'm something of a loner. That butterfly is all the company I need."
"Well, you went to the trouble of inviting them along on this trip, didn't you?"
Tad is silent for a moment. The butterfly slowly spreads and folds his wings, as if to pull in the sun.
"Well," he says at length, "I was just a bit...worried. I mean, with the party and all. I thought you might be a little, I dunno, nervous or something coming out here with just me."
"Don't be silly," I say, but my mind is suddenly cold. The sun is too bright, but it seems cold also; not yellow, but white light, artic.
Tad is staring off into the far blue. "You seemed pretty freaked out at the party. I totally understand. It was a...strange situation. But then later, when we were all together driving back, that was something." I want to agree, to let those hazy azure memories out in a gush of passion (the dark night; moonlight), but my mouth seems to have been pasted together. I, too, can only stare forward, not seeing the canopy where leaves rustle to a celestial tune. He continues. "It's weird what fate can throw in your lap. Say we had been driving back, and a deer had decided that was the moment to cut across the road, just as our headlights swell to stars. Wham -- we're not here, breathing this. Or, should this log have a hairline crack, cutting straight through the middle, between us...one second, dry and happy, the next...wet, broken...who knows. Or, hell, that bottle, like some cosmic poker hand."
"You're happy?" I say. I didn't mean to say it, or maybe it wasn't the first thing I meant to ask, but it slipped out anyway.
Tad does not throw back some response like people do. He leans back, enough so I almost move to hold him up, and thinks. Tad will think when others talk. This is so clear.
"Yes. Yes, I can't imagine being more happy. Here I am, in the most beautiful place in the world as far as I'm concerned, on a warm log, dangling over a cool stream...next to my best friend in the world. And the sunshine on my face. You are my best friend, you know. I know you've got Cliff...and that's ok, I wouldn't be a good one of those friends anyway, the drop-by-any-old-time, call me just whenever kind of kid. But you are my best friend, and I'm happy we could spend this time together. Dalton, Shark; they're great kids, but it's really your company I want. It was really an awkward moment, but I have to admit, I wasn't surprised when the bottle landed on you. I just feel like we have...some connection, some spiritual link. Don't you?"
I can't say anything. I don't know what to say. I can't say anything. I can't say. I can't. I. So he says it for me.
"Derrick, are you gay?"
I look at him. He is looking at me.
"Yes," I say.
The butterfly spreads its wings, for a moment in the sunlight like a golden heart suspended between two cleft banks, magically suspended in time above a precipice; then, it flies off into forever blue.
Final Word: My apologies on another cliff hanger, but, well, that's my job. Isn't serialized fiction a kick in the pants? I seem to say the same thing every time, but no one listens, so I'll try a slightly different approach. If you liked this story enough that you're still reading this part, you are OBLIGATED to send me an email with critiques, suggestions, and...dare I say it...even the occasional compliment wouldn't kill me. On the other hand, if you disliked this story enough that you're so blinded by rage you haven't noticed it's ended, you are OBLIGATED to send me an email and bitch. Now do what you're told. Everyone loves to take orders. The email is new: XfragmentofanangelX@hotmail.com. Give me a buzz. And hey, if you sound interesting, maybe I'll strike up a conversation. You can always hope...