It’s Christmas Eve in our wonderful Christian year of 1801. Snow falls on my Belgian town. The flakes melt as soon as they hit the roofs. I take time to watch them through the bars of my prison cell. A slight wind pushes them, slants them to the left and flutters each star before letting it land. I imagine the wind pushing them is almost quiet, maybe a bit louder than a whisper, more like a hymn a choir of children will sing “Amen” to when it’s done. I take another minute to look at the wet rooftops and white floating in a black sky. The peaceful colors come together to glisten the thin glass of my window. I want to reach out and collect a cold constellation on my palm.
But my partner tells me it’s time to get back to work. His voice snaps my reverie. I look to him a bit envious for thinking up an escape plan before I had. He sits on the gathered straw we have to use as beds because there isn’t a single mattress in the facility. Our faces and arms are dirty from digging. I apologize for taking longer to dream than we had agreed to. He nods, and I go back to work while thinking of snow falling from the sky and landing on roofs still too warm to hold it. We had moved the first block from the wall a while ago. It took us an hour to dig the mortar away so we could pull the stone from its lodging. He was correct in predicting there is nothing behind it, only emptiness and another wall. Cool air whistles up from water rushing through the sewer. I don’t know how far down the chute goes, or how wide it is. I know we are digging a hole big enough to squeeze through. That’s the plan. He says on the other side we’ll climb less than a meter, `punch a hole in the roof, climb through and inhale freedom.
I know I’ll shimmy down the side of the prison, using the worn masonry for holds. Then I’m going to stroll the street, looking into every window I pass and see what I’ve missed the past week. I want to watch families huddle around their tables, bow for grace and eating together from steaming plates. I'm impatient to see pretty girls in their holiday finery waiting to be touched and held.
I need the chill air and warm cooking filling me, lifting and sending me beyond myself, never to bring me back. I’ll be free. My chest so big I could explode.
However, I remember I am still in my cell. That I haven’t finish digging the hole in the wall. That the roof hasn’t been penetrated and my cellmate-turned partner-is watching me do my share of excavating while he takes his turn resting.
I look up to watch him rise to help. He never rests long or sleeps much. Through his efforts the hole grows wider by two, then three blocks. Mortar dust coat our fingers and make me sneeze. I pull the collar of my shirt up over my mouth and nose like my partner has his. We dig at the mortar with the edges of brick flakes he cracked from the window frame earlier in the morning. They're small, no larger than an average man’s thumb. So we use them frugally, scoring the mortar with their sharp edges then scraping it out with their blunt, round ends.
My friend speaks as he digs. “This prison was built thirty years ago. It was a butcher plant then. Hogs, lambs and goats were brought up the receiving ramps in the rear and herded into what is now the cell areas. Back then, all this was an open stage above the river. Parts nobody needed were tossed down into the water where they were carried underground.”
I instinctively look through the hole, it isn’t big enough for all of me to fit through, and too black to see the river. But I can hear the rushing through the channel and water lapping subterranean banks. The foulest odor comes from it. The rot from those tossed parts seems to have lingered. Sulfuric decay rises up and floods our cell. It is almost too much to breathe through. Yet my partner continues speaking as if death and rot has no effect on him.
The smells has the other prisoners coughing. But they don't complain. They hear our scrapping and maybe hope we succeed.
“There was a plague here a few years ago. People of all ages and income became sick and died in vomit. The corpses had twisted pale faces. There was at least one body in every home and every alley. Bloated and fat bellies all of them. The odor from their opened mouths would sicken whoever smelled it and drop them to their knees. It didn’t matter what size or strength they were. They would just fall.”
I nod, dizzy myself from the rising stench. I had heard this story before. A girl running from that same plague sought sanctuary at my parents’ estate. My father let her stay. She was a ruby hair beauty. Skin white as ivory, blue eyes, lips made to give perfect pink kisses. She was grateful for our mercy. Shaking and scared, she said the rest of her family was gone. It was a shame and I couldn’t help but fall in love with her.
One day I watched her weave crowns from plucked flowers with my sister. She was so charming that after dinner, I went into her bedchamber to show my appreciation. I had done it before, to other girls. But none of them were as golden or fought as hard as this one. She actually bit my hand, made me bleed when all I wanted was to love her.
That’s why I punched the life from her throat. Dear mother and father burned her body like they had the others, but they said enough to my hungers. That I had to stop.
So I left home for their sake. I learned later that they brought forgiveness from the magistrate after police found the red head’s hot bones in their oven. I drifted for years, feeding my passions until I came here. The plague had subsided leaving many orphans, widows and fallen divas vying for the mercies of a man with money and no morals.
My friend continues his story. “Low rains had shrank the river, so the butchered parts weren’t going as far downstream as planned. There was so much material that it all clogged and rotted and spoiled the city’s reservoir.”
“Horrible.”
“Very. The plague ended once the river was cleared and the sewer system improved. The town converted this place to a prison to avoid another plague and to house the men and women who lived like tyrants through it.”
We dig for some time, hurrying to clear away before the guard makes his midnight round. All is quiet. I hear the other prisoners twisting for warmth under their rough blankets. Me, my heart is drumming behind my eyes.
Pockets, my friend, talks. The longest and most I’ve heard him speak since he came to the prison three days ago. The guard put him in my cell even though I protested being caged with an African. But Pockets isn’t from Africa, He told me he is from the the Caribbean colonies. “Jamaica.” He showed me his hands, and explained the difference. “Look at the red under my browns. That’s how you can tell a Jamaican from an African.”
He does have burning reds under his earthy brown.
We remove a fourth block which makes the hole large enough for man my size to slip through. Pockets is leaner than me, and stronger in the way a whip is stronger than the bull it cuts. He is all dark, even his eyes. They don’t reflect or emit any sort of light. Dead eyes we called them when I was a child. My friends and I once came upon a squirrel that a hawk had torn in half. Its eyes were still open. I prodded the remains with a stick and no matter how I moved it, no matter what angle the sunlight fell on it, the eyes stayed black.
I ask Pockets why he is staring at me the way the squirrel did. His reply is a simple. “Just want to make sure I remember you, my friend.”
We use bedding to muffle the scraping sound of the blocks moving across the floor. Our work is done with hardly any noise which is remarkable considering the weight of the stones.
Pockets keeps staring at me but is as relaxed as a lost Summer Sunday. He doesn’t even breath heavy from our efforts.
I ask him again. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
This time his response comes with quick movement of his left arm and an explosion against my temple. The universe booms of cracking bone. I spin in it, fall, crash to Earth.
I see Pockets in fluttering lights. The day he first came to the prison. He entered my cell without a word. I asked the guard why put him with me. I got no answer. But we were locked together, him silent and dead eyed. Me wanting freedom.
The second day he started to speak to me. He used my language, talked of things I loved without me telling him. We spoke of crimes without victims, because there is never any victims. Not really. Just prey who refuse to accept their fate and complain against the obvious.
Pockets knows, though we never met before. He made me his kindred because he understands it is my right as a noble man to commit atrocities.
When I wake he is standing over me with one of the blocks in his hands. The warm Caribbean accent that once agreed with me, is now menacing.
“The girls’ families offered me 30 Francs. All the spare money they could collect over the years. I only took 10. The rest, I told them, I would get from you.
“You did what you did because you’re the son of a Duke. Then you tried to run. But a simple drunken brawl in a tavern slowed you down by putting you here. Someone took all your money so you can’t bribe your way out. Someone, I bet the same person, stole your clothes, your jewels, your pistol. Leaving you to rot in this frigid place.”
I hear him and understand. He has my money and must had used some of it to get the guard to pass a half dozen empty and half filled cells to put him with me. I can’t say anything, my neck aches as much as my hands and feet. I can see that he has crushed the ends of my limbs. I can feel bone clogging my throat whenever I try to breathe or speak.
The block in Pockets’ hands drips. I hadn’t noticed it before. He raises it and slams it down over and over until I feel I have no human shape anymore. I can be moved like a sheet with bits of sharp bones floating around the vitals. I close my eyes and dream of crawling through the wall. Then I stick my head through the hole in the roof. A hole I bet Pockets has already dug.
I know he will escape and start new. I bet he has a she devil, dark as him, waiting out there for his return. Her arms ready to circle him in embrace and take him inside her unholiness.
He asks. “Who in this world do you love most?”
Death comes rolling behind my fears. It’s loud. Goodbye father. Goodbye mother. Goodbye little Jeanette, my precious sister. There is a clamor in my ears then all is as peaceful as the snow outside.
“I’m leaving you now. Say your goodbyes. Because you’ll never them again. You know there is no Heaven or Hell. This is it, the end of you.”
I don’t feel like I lost a lot of blood. When I lift my eyes I can see a bit of snowfall past the window, just a slit from this angle. Big flakes of fluff. This world is so beautiful. I think I whiff pastries baking and carolers singing Germanic hymns. I’m sleepy but if I go to sleep I know I won’t wake up. I don’t want to leave yet. Because I’m too afraid there’ll be nothing on the other side. He's taken everything from me; property, pride, faith, shape. I'm left with a body that's become the worst prison imaginable. I'm hopeless and ruined. A sideways glances catches him sliding through the hole. He smiles and winks at me before he disappears.
I'm not going die with him in my mind. I will not give him that victory. I'm going to push him out and leave him freezing under the fluttering gray in black.
It's getting harder to think anyway. I smell open graves and hear the river giggling. I'm going to get lost in them and use their cover to hide from that devil. As the world gets darker and smaller, I'll just watch the black snow and dream.
First off I have to say I'm so sorry for any mistakes I made in trying to raise you. I did the best I could with what little experience and prep I had bringing up a child as special as you.
Let me say again that I'm forever proud of you. I hope it showed through the yells and frustrations and times it seemed I wanted to give up. I'm so happy you're here, laughing , loving, and talking in that 90 words per second way you have. The one that always end in a sly dimpled cheeks smile.
You are what I asked for all those years ago when having another child seemed a fantasy. I had hope and faith I would be heard. Then you came, loud, strong, handsome. I was overwhelmed by how much you reflected Heaven's grace. You even won over sissy's heart, which is saying a lot. She didn't want to share the family spotlight and there you were, fat and red, trying to make toothless smiles while holding firmly to her forefinger. Oh, how you won her over with that your casual charm of yours.
After finally seeing you, it was hard for any of us to recall when doctor after doctor kept telling us "No." because of your mother's condition and my age. They shook their heads, gave their polite sympathies and called "Next."
But you've never accepted "No." I think you get that from both your mom and my father. Your mom is hardheaded, and as for granddad, "No" is not a word a seventh son learns. "Maybe", yes. But "No", uh-huh, never. To him it's a sound without meaning. You both share that same hearing.
When you arrived, more doctors told us you would have issues. As you grew, teachers and sitters told us you had issues. You were too rambunctious, your moods swung too wide this way and that. There was no middle with you, only delirious highs or nerve wrecking lows. Rarely any calm.
Your mom and I blamed ourselves, then each other, sometimes we cursed our heritage, our status, our home, our dreams. There were times we were the worst parents, then the best, hardly were we ever average. You never gave us chance to be average, because you always demanded more from us than that.
You were exhausting but never draining. For every cry you gave us two laughs, every outburst was repaired with a bear hug, every trip to the principle's office was followed by you reminding us that today was better than yesterday. And yes it was. You were right, today was always better than yesterday.
You passed from school to school, talked with therapists and counselors, listened to grave predictions and helpful advice without loosing that dimpled smile. Then they all told us what we already knew, that you were a genius in disguise. They needed IQ tests to tell them what your mom and I could see just from watching you play. Science is often slow that way, so learn to be patient with it.
Remember when you beat those bullies? Just between me and you, I have to admit I'm still proud of that. I didn't mind picking you up from suspension after I heard what they had said and tried to do, and saw how thoroughly you demolished them. I maybe wrong, but I think evil should be whupped every time it rears its head, and you whupped it good. They never challenged you again after you showed them you had as much right to this planet as they did.
I am suppose to prepare you for life's cruelties but you instead prepared me. You showed me that there are few barriers that can't be stormed through and smirked at once you're on the other side.
However, I still get scared for you in this world, especially when you said you're going to get married one day. I know nothing is going to stop you, not my worries, nor the naysayers. You are going to get married, just like you ace tests and stomp over challenges.
In fact I can see the bride from this many years away. I know her without having her name. I don't doubt you'll find her. I'm just worried by the misses and heartache you'll suffer before the right woman is in your arms. You've been through so much already. Yet, none of it has dimmed you. I once called you a hero and you replied, "I'm not a hero. I just do what I'm suppose to."
That's why I know when Ms. Perfect comes to you she'll be envied. I also know she'll be just like you, a dedicated, clever worker, who crazy dances for no reason, enjoys the colors and flavors of the world, and grins big when the door opens at the end of the day and you see each other all new again. A tight embrace before sleep. She's waiting for you like you're waiting for her. I know you will treasure her as your mom and I treasure you.
You two will argue and get on one another's nerves, make up a hundred times, want to call it quits a hundred times. Life happens, so you two enjoy it best you can and don't let a few bumps derail your journey.
On your seventh birthday, your best friend M_ drew you a picture on a sheet of paper and gave it to you during your party in the park. Over all the presents you got that day, M_'s drawing is the only one you still have. It was the only one hand made. "She put her heart in it." That's why you said you kept it. Part of me hopes you and M_ see each other again some day and that you show her the drawing so she'll have a chance to tear up with pride. Life happens and it's wonderful.
So yes, I know you'll be a good husband because you've been a good person and loving son. I'm as sure of this as I was of that quiet promise that brought you here.
The late, great Roger Ebert once gave me an excellent piece of advice.
When I was a kid, I would sneak into the family living room and wait every Sunday night to watch Ebert and Siskel review movies and argue points of good story telling. Most of the time their debates were more entertaining than many of the movies they recommended. But that was why watching them was so much fun.
On one show Roger was turned sideways in his seat, looked straight at me through the tv and said, "The best way to tell if a movie is a classic is to re-watch it every ten years. When your mountinglife experiences have changed your perspective on big, and little, things. If the film brings you the same enjoyment or more, then it is a classic. At least for you." That's what I remember him saying, though my memory may have altered some of the words and emphasis.
Still, Roger gave me a new ritual. One where every few years I go back and revisit books and movies and even songs to see how they measure to my first impressions. Robert K. Massie's Peter The Great remains one of my favorite books and the Master And Commander series by Patrick O'Brian still gets my adrenaline going. However, now that I'm out of college and have to worry about bills and pressures at work, I can appreciate the value of escapism more. So Starship Troopers, a movie I thought was juvenile when I first saw it, is a must see every time it comes on. Funny, but the first thing my father would do after he came home dirty and beat from work, was turn on cartoons. I was embarrassed because he hardly watched the world news like other kids said their dads did. But now I get it, the world is going to spin and the people in it are going to do what they're going to do. You can't make them drive you crazy so whenever you can, grab some laughs and peace. Watch Bugs Bunny, or even space marines fighting giant bugs, and enjoy the ride.
But some things are hard for me to pass over. This weekend I came across a copy of Tales Of The Arabian Knights. as translated by Sir Richard F. Burton. When I was a kid it was the very first big book I ever read. I carried my old copy with me so often that it fell apart and the chapters got lost.
The new book helped me regained most of that love except for one part. Years ago, back in grade school, "The Tale Of Scheherazade." was my introduction to the power of storytelling. Today after rampant fanaticism and beheadings via internet and honor killings and 24 hour coverage of people dying for sexual choices, the magic of Scheherazade is gone. Sinbad, Ali Baba, Aladdin are still old friends. But I wanted something bad and judgmental to happen to the king who beheaded 1000 virgins because he feared they might be unfaithful to him. I don't like that he got the girl in the end and escaped justice
Roger was right. Time adds layers, skews perceptions. Maybe that's why we need to reboot some stories every now and then, or retell them from a different angle. Experience makes us see things we didn't at first. Edgar Allen Poe wrote rich horror stories back when I was in high school. Today, I see that he wasn't a master of horror as much as a master of the psychological thriller by forcing his readers to look through the eyes of mad men. Years after my book report on the Scarlet Letter, I've met a few Hesters that convinced me that the emotions in Hawthorne's novel weren't as sappy as they seemed back in the day.
Also there's a lot going on in the Three Little Pigs, depending on how many voices you use to tell it to your kids.
“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.” -Alan Moore, V For Vendetta
My favorite story of the year wasn't found in a book or was on a screen. I don't even think it has received an award yet, though I'm hoping it gets something.
It is a battlefield story from here in the American heartland. Now I don't know how much of it is embellished, but it is by far better than the other stories swirling from the same event. And talk about economy, it is told by only one picture.
This is how it goes. A teargas canister catches fire during one of worst nights of the Ferguson riots. It rolls dangerously close to some kids when a man clad in a tank top with the American flag on it, grabs the canister and flings it away. The kids are saved and the man fades into the obscurity he came from. There's no press interviews, no reality shows, no tabloids. He does what he has to and is gone. Oh yes, he was eating from a bag of potato chips just before he was superman.
What grabs me about the story is that the kids are never shown or described. They could have been any color, any age, any ethnicity. The man, himself, is black but being clad in the American flag seems to take him beyond any one label. I like to think that the kids could have been any kids and that anyone with the opportunity, and a clear mind, would have done what the man did.
Of course I'm seeing in the story what I want to. But isn't that what art does? It allows the hearer or reader or viewer to build on what the creator has presented.
The idea of a policeman shooting an unarmed man rouses emotions from all sides because of histories, or perceived histories, tensions, disappointments, envies, fears, wishes for equality, feeling of having already given enough, suspicions, guilt, ambitions, depressions, the grand beautiful love of humanity that sees nothing but the plain truth of us all being one.
The players become proxies for ourselves. Much of Ferguson's celebrity comes from how deeply the person receiving can invest in the players and situations. No matter how wild the exaggerations, if we see reflections of ourselves in them we're willing to go for the ride. Sometimes even adding our own angles before passing them on.
Maybe that's why the three great holy books, the Bible, Torah and Koran have spawned so many sects and denominations. There are so many views that it is funny going to the original texts and often seeing the thing creating the divisions aren't even there.
Of course it's not necessarily bad that we imbue ourselves in stories. Most writers hope for audience immersion. It's what makes a story live and become immortal.
My favorite authors instinctively have a grip on this and use their stories to make me admit something about myself. They give me a character I can relate to and make that character, me, see and experience the world differently. These authors use fiction to lead their readers to truths that otherwise would go unnoticed and challenge preconceived notions that have fixed themselves as fact.
I have just written a book where the hero is a supporting character. He, himself, is not the most important person. I really don't mention him much. Instead I focused on the results of his influence by following the people affected by him.
This is nothing new, putting the hero in the background probably goes back to when the first man created a cast of gods and had them push humans over a cosmic chessboard. Doctorow traded gods for Father and Mother when he wrote the impossibly good Ragtime. Mario Puzo revolved a wonderful crew of low lives around Don Corleone and where would Gabriel Marquez's lyrical town of Macondo and its colorful citizens be without Jose Arcadio Buendia and Ursula anchoring them. Godfather is my favorite quick read and Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is just magic put into words.
There is something big and exciting about watching people revolve around a single point and seeing them reach out to one another and connect. I think this is why some of my favorite stories, no matter the medium, have been ensemble pieces.
And why my favorite heroes have been ones who inspire as well as lead. One of the biggest criticism of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy is that there was not enough Batman. Yet I think this is what made it such a enduring story. Those three movies were never about Batman, but about Bruce Wayne inspiring the people of Gotham to rise up and reclaim their city. Keeping to this theme is what made the series powerful. In the first movie, the Gotham police are the enemy, we want their cars pancaked under the Batmobile. Yet,by the trilogy's end, this police force are nearly equal to the Dark Knight in saving the city. Throughout the three movies we see less of Batman as more of Gotham's citizens take control of their destiny
Watching that growth is one of the reasons those three movies are so popular. We all want to feel, or know, that we can do better, achieve more if touched by the right stimulus. That's why we search so hard for soul mates to complete us or best friend that will always support us. With the right love, encouragement, lecture, muscle, we can be pushed to do the extraordinary. Even if it's something important to no one other than ourselves.
That's why I'm attracted to ensembles, they're so lifelike. It's just fun watching people come together to define a hero and how the hero, and heroine, in return ignites his or her followers.