Great Kills Review
Winter
2005 – Volume I, issue 2
|
Emily Chandler |
The Seven Day
Companion
A while and a
time ago, in the ocean waters south of
Fortunately, his situation was not strictly dire. The lifeboat was meant for
dozens of occupants, so there were plenty of rations, a filtration device for
water, and the sailor had smuggled an armful of books out of the maelstrom. He
was afloat, with no means to propel himself toward civilization, but gladly had
food to eat, water to drink and the mental stimulation to keep him occupied. In
moments of private desolation the sailor would pray to his particular god that
he may have a companion, if only for a day, so that he would not be so terribly
alone. The man missed conversation and the sharing of ideas, camaraderie and
the humanity that came from company, and would have happily shared half his
abundance of rations with another sentient being .The ocean, limitless on every
side , made his isolation all too complete, and his desire for accompaniment
grew with each passing day. Until the evening some time later, when the sailor
saw a flickering dot of light on the horizon.
Being in a time of war the man was able to deduce that the form of illumination
was probably an explosion, perhaps much like his own. Hours later, as current
drew him closer to the wreckage, bits of charred wood and debris floated by,
but no people. No survivors. Except a
small form huddled half-dead, clinging to the some indistinguishable remains of
the ship.
With tender difficulty the sailor lifted the person, a girl, into his lifeboat
and took stock of the situation: She was young, younger than him by half a
decade, perhaps sixteen or so and pale of face as she lay barely breathing on
the floor of his boat. The man found
where shrapnel from the explosion had punctured her stomach. The twisted metal
debris had entered her stomach from the left side, causing a large gash; and
though he couldn't tell how far it penetrated her internally he knew that
attempting to wrench it from her body could, and probably would, be fatal.
It took days to revive the young lady, feeding her small amounts of bread
dipped in fresh water. But the reward was a bright, young individual, and a
survivor like himself. As the girl came to, her awareness of the foreign matter
invading her body appalled her senses and she beseeched the sailor to remove it
from her flesh. The man tried to explain that removal would almost certainly
mean death, but to no avail as the girl pleaded and begged that he not leave
her as a monstrosity. They finally agrred that the girl would stay with the
sailor for seven days, to talk with him and think about her decision, and if
after the allotted time she still wanted the shrapnel removed he would oblige
her.
On the first day they kept their conversation light; they spoke of popular
music at the time, as much as he knew from before the sailor was cast afloat,
and fashion for which the girl had a thriving passion as well as any other
fancies that took them.
On the second day they grew to know each other more as they spoke about their
childhoods and their lives thus far. She learned that the man's father had been
a sailor, and that he had three sisters. He learned that the girl could play
piano and dreamed of traveling to
On the third day they spoke of more intellectual matters, classic literature
that they both enjoyed, the great minds of their time and the politics of the
war. They learned of shared political views and grew to respect each other in a
way they would not have without political discourse.
On the fourth day they spoke about love. The young lady spoke well of a man she
loved, her fiancé, who had been with her and her parents on the ship. She
smiled, told stories, and the sailor found himself falling in love with this
youthful girl. No, not madly in love, or deeply for that matter, but the love
of being the only two people in existence and a love borne of sorrow.
On the fifth day they addressed the idea of god, each speaking of their own
ideas, of each specific form of god that they believed in. The sailor and the
girl smiled with the comparisons in their faiths, and mused over the
differences. There was strange comfort in sharing their faith, and on the fifth
evening they prayed.
On the sixth day they ran out of things to say. All the topics of discussion
dried up, and it seemed that they had spoken on everything they could and
exhausted their conversation. So they lapsed into a comfortable silence,
listening only to the wash of waves against the side of the lifeboat.
And on the seventh day the she asked the sailor to remove the harsh fragment of
metal. Being an honest man he prepared to make good on his promise. The man
gave her a shot of whiskey and a bullet to bite before he took hold of the
piece of shrapnel. It was with an unpleasant sound of tearing flesh that he pulled
it from her stomach, her pain as naked as her relief upon her face. The
invading entity ended up being the size of his outstretched hand, and shaped
cruelly like a scythe-blade; he quickly tossed it over the side of the
lifeboat, losing the metal to the waves.
The death of her family, of her fiancé, of the hundreds of people on her ship
and her own imminent passing came crashing down upon the girl with the removal
of the shrapnel, the clarity was both bitter and striking and her eyes grew
large with pain and fright. Her hands grasped at the back of the sailor neck,
pulling him down into a hard kiss. Their teeth clicked and she fiercely kissed
him with strength the sailor had not known she could possess. Slowly, she
released him. He closed her eyes.
A short time later the sailor committed her to the ocean. He lowered the girl
into the waves, watching without emotion as she sank until there was nothing
left to see. The man then went to the store of rations and drank slowly a dram
of whiskey. The sailor's heart was not heavy with sadness, as his prayer had
been answered; to have a companion, even for a day.
Mourning the Death of
a Muse
Solemn and
faceless they bore her coffin in from the cold, listless morning. It was early
yet, and the chapel had not yet filled; but I knew that before long there
wouldn’t even be room left to stand. The
pallbearers paused with the silence of ritual, and placed their burden at the
front of the church. Candlelight caught the luster of the polished mahogany;
just as well it should shine being a closed casket service. The air was
stifling with the sickly scent of flora. One could almost forget the somber
occasion and imagine a lush and tropical paradise from the overabundance of
blooms and plumes that littered the sides and front of the chapel. (I am sure
that we cleaned out every florist in the county and for miles around) Some flowers I could pick out with names and
scents, the easy ones like roses, glads, orchids, and marigolds; but it seemed
like countless others, thousands, I was unable to name. Plants with large and sexually
prominent flowers with ostentatious colors bordering on obscene, they played
the backdrop for a Monday morning funeral.
By now the chapel was filled, and more people attempted to cram into the nooks
and crannies. My first guess was a gross underestimate as even the standing
room was swiftly obliterated by the hordes of those who came to mourn. Those
around me had faces that seemed to shift and alter in my peripheral view. Their facial expressions blurred and changed
like a twisted video montage making it nearly impossible to focus on any
particular person; though I imagined I saw those I knew and loved among them.
Were we all struck by loss this day?
As the
novelty of the arriving casket wore off the low rumble of conversation rose
through the church, the sound beastlike in its one mindedness. I found stilted and faltering words, unknown
to me, passing through my lips and from the mouths of all present. It seemed
that the air itself was filled with the buzz of meaningless words, but with her
death the words were merely empty sounds to fill the space. The words
themselves were dead, and they fluttered to the wooden floor like swatted
flies.
The owner of our words was wrapped in her shroud and lay in that simple dark
box. And so, a chapel filled with a
million collectively spoke artless gibberish when we attempted to mourn our
greatest grief at losing our gift; our Muse. It seems ironic to me that the one
moment when we all needed to remember the inspiring guardian of letters loved
and stories told, when it was absolutely obligatory to paint our grief in the
words she gave us, that those words ran dry. I wept. No, I keened because the
words I needed were gone. When I needed them the most, they fled and I babbled
mercilessly with the throngs. Tears were on the undistinguishable faces,
pouring out the words that should have been, the words that could not be. And we could only hope, could only pray that
it was enough to honor the giver of life and passion to the lives of our work.
But even with our hope, the truth was illustrated on our faces; we were
devastated, and without the eloquence to display it..
The clamor grew to a cacophony as frustrated mourners sobbed and wailed
wordlessly. The ornate stained glass windows, shades of vermillion, azure and
gold rattled in their casements as the din reached unearthly decibels. I was
searching my mind for beautiful words, a last ditch effort in denial, a need
for something ─ something that could remain in memory of my beloved muse.
I spoke, and the room hushed. I spoke and millions beyond counting ceased their
cries and their gnashing of teeth. Daunted by the deadening silence I wavered,
knowing all eyes focused on me. I could feel them like
indeterminate
points of light.
”There is nothing I can say to heal this grievous rift. I am broken now, as are you all. With her death, we died as the words died on
our lips. There is nothing we could say,
if we could say anything, to fill the void in our minds and hearts that her
death tears into us. Even as I speak
now, I bring no hope, no kind words to act as a salve on your ears. We are lost
now. Our pens are now foreign creatures forever to sleep on dusty shelves. But
while you mourn the corpse of our creator, I fear that the situation grows ever
worsening for us. Our physical lives are
far from over, and I regret that while we may live on, we shall be but
husks. Love letters, novels, poems,
stories, tales; they are lost to us now. Decades in the future, when we think ourselves
healed from this gash in our souls, have near forgotten this communion of the
lost, you will itch. This itch will agitate, but you'll have dislodged the
memory of your beloved Muse and will not recall the need to create. Maybe
you'll attempt other means or creativity: painting, building, perhaps
knitting. All other activity will leave
you unfulfilled. The itch will eventually pass, but you will remain hollow.
I miss Her, to be quite frank. I yearn for
Her gentle and persuasive power. It
would often flow through me, sometimes a soft and thick glow of clover honey,
and other times a river of fire that burned me at all hours. I miss the nights I could not sleep for the
words that made me tremble, that weakened me for all their strength. Her most tender whispers that stirred me from
dreams, filled me with ideas, lifted me and gave me a presence among poets. Honestly, the best part of me is in that
solemn mahogany box and it takes all my strength not to throw my body down on
that casket and writhe with grief. But even if my Muse is gone, my dignity is
still painfully intact.
If I can offer you any condolences, and I sincerely doubt I can, it would be
that so many of us, nearly all of us are losing the creator of our Talent. You
are not alone, though lost. Starving in
union, wordless, but never silent. I
have no way to end this makeshift and blatantly misspoken eulogy on a happier
note; but I can only remind you of what you had, the beauty, the power in your
Words and the eloquence. Remembrance
will keep the wounds fresh, I know this. But keeping the memory of the Muse, and her
gifts to you with every word you ever wrote may keep some part of your bond
with her alive.
I abated into silence as my words left me. The well of my last eloquence, though stark
and unbeautiful, was at last depleted. As
I was standing while I spoke, I now sat. No longer able or willing to speak I was just
another anonymous face in the sea of mourning.
Geese Mate For Life
We were only
children then, Cassandra and me. At seventeen I had not yet known grief, and
thus was a man only in stature, and she was only a girl.
In the summer we would run, down the hills and towards the large lake in the
east end of town. Our pleasure sprang from our breathless pursuit of something
we couldn't name, the rolling hills of greenery and the occasional wild
dandelion. When we reached the shore we would collapse in each other's arms,
laughing at the geese that shared our hideaway. Looking back I know nothing
could be as perfect as that summer, but even in memory every instant of
sleeping or waking was a flawless bliss. And we were only children.
She would take me down to the edge of the water, and our time would be spent
listening to calm serenity and the ripples of our lake. Sand would collect in
our shoes until we shucked ourselves of shoes and clothes alike, and rolled
around like Adam and Eve; as pure and nonsensical. Even children know the
pleasure of love, and I suppose Cassandra was my first love. I had yet to know
grief.
It was the cusp of summer, the edge that separates the full ripeness of life
with the impending rot of autumn. And I knew that she and I would part. I had
the first inklings of pain to come, but even that would be anesthetized with
full adulthood.
She pulled me aside, one of the last days I would ever see her. We were on a
blanket, nearly quiet as we watched waterfowl prepare for the yearly migration
north. Cassandra pointed to a couple of geese, floating close to each other in
the shallows. "Geese mate for life," she said to me, and it gave me
pause for thought. She was correct, though she attempted hope I could not
sustain.
"Yes, my love. Geese mate for life. But what is their lifespan to
ours?"
About the Author
Emily Chandler was born twenty-three years ago in her
hometown of
“The Seven Day Companion” © 2005 by Emily
Chandler
“Mourning the Death of a Muse” © 2005 by
Emily Chandler
“Geese Mate for Life” © 2005 by Emily
Chandler
*All rights reserved by the author – no work
may be reprinted without the express consent of its author.