PERSEPHONE
You Dumbass! Why couldn’t you see it coming? But, of course, and as I suspected, you were too hopped up on steroids and crystal meth to notice anything outside of your superhuman powers. Now what remains, now that the bus did its work? A mangled mountain bike and a mangled body. Of course you weren’t wearing a helmet. I am not going to blame myself. I did not deliberately stick my umbrella in your wheel spokes. I was simply trying to dodge out of your way as you careened out of that narrow trail and down the equally narrow slope to the road, almost taking me with you. That was the third time? The first time, in June, I tried to ignore you and just hoped you wouldn’t hit anyone. The second time, two or three weeks later, you did it again and this time I yelled at you, “thanks for the warning!” and saucily in the middle of the road you stopped, turned around and replied, “You’re welcome.” I replied that you should take care now that you don’t get run over. I didn’t have to mention, by the way, that I’m old enough to be your father. Why did you even bother riding your bike in this forest? You were going so fast you couldn’t have noticed the beauty around you, nor heard the birds singing, plugged into your I-pod listening to who knows what sort of god-awful rap music. You had no business here. You were not worthy of this forest. A destructive drone is what you are. And now you’re in a coma on life support.
This is the third time. I swore at you this time, but it was too late. You went flying out of control in front of that bus. The poor driver. He will probably have to go on sick leave for a while, he looked so shaken up. Thank God neither he nor any of his passengers were hurt. Why didn’t you just kill yourself, jump off a bridge, take pills or hang yourself like other people do. No one needs this drama!
This is what? My third visit? You’re such a prone mess of tubes, wires and bandages, I wouldn’t recognize you. Of course I have never had a chance to look at your face. I only saw you at a distance when you turned around on your bike in the middle of Sixteenth Avenue to give me your sarcastic little riposte. I would guess you to be not much more than thirty. Averagely handsome Caucasian features, perhaps a chin and nose just a little bit too prominent, pale unremarkable eyes and a lean build just verging on muscular. Not ugly, but I’m sure that not all the ladies (or gentlemen, for that matter) are readily slain over you. But now, in this hospital bed you have an appearance of sloppily packaged meat, perhaps a gigantic pork loin, or maybe a slab of goat meat in a Halal butcher shop or a chunk of beef in a Kosher store. Not that I would know the difference: they’re all killing each other in the Middle East and all their men are circumcised. Not that I would bother to check in your case, because as well as being a huge indignity against you that I would never think of committing you are not exactly someone who elicits my curiosity.
I do know your name now. You are Jake Farmer. You’re ex-brother-in-law last week also furnished me with a few biographical details: Born thirty-five years ago in Charlottetown, New Brunswick, where you also did military service and even found yourself in Afghanistan from where you were sent home on a dishonorable discharge that was drug and sex related. That was when your wife of six years divorced your sorry ass. She is still in New Brunswick raising your four-year-old son. Her brother said that she is not going to fly out to see you. She’s struggling on welfare raising your kid, but he also mentioned other issues. You used to hit her, it turns out. You even put her in hospital a couple of times. She is afraid of you. She likely is also afraid that she will dance on your grave if she hangs around here long enough to see you breathe your last. Ted, your ex-brother-in-law and I have so far been your only visitors. This is why I come here. Because I feel sorry for you? Well…you’re a human being, I guess. I was amazed that the police and paramedics gave me permission to accompany you to hospital where I learned your name. I did tell the police officer about the umbrella. I have nothing to hide. It flew out at an angle and briefly jammed your wheel. According to the cop such a thing probably would have slowed you down a bit. Had it not been for the bus…
But you know you little doofus, it isn’t you that I really care a rat’s ass about so much as Ted your brother-in-law. Last time I saw him, on the weekend, he was crying. Your only friend it turns out. He is young, not more than twenty, and very religious. A small, slim little guy with a couple of pimples left over from high school and a gentle smile. If his sister is anything like him then you really did marry out of your league. As I sit here in the corner reading my latest murder mystery I notice a change in the machinery surrounding you. A flat tone, like a subdued smoke alarm. The nurse, followed by another comes rushing in: they look, they check, they poke and prod and check and listen. One of them looks up at me. “Is this your son?” she asks. She’s Asian, I think Filipino, small, pretty, and gentle. I shake my head, gently. “I’m afraid—” she says in a halting voice. Her colleague, a blonde-haired girl tries to perform CPR. She stops, checks, listens, then kneads your chest again, stops, listens, and keeps kneading and pushing and pumping and breathing her young life into your dead mouth and I think, why even bother, you’re gone, you probably wouldn’t want to return to that wreck of a body even if you were given the choice. The doctor comes in, looks, pokes, prods and checks. He is tall and slim, I think Iranian. Somewhere in his forties with a thick thatch of greying black hair and black-rim glasses. He mumbles something to both the nurses and they mumble back. The doctor approaches me and says, “Are you related to Jacob Farmer.” I reply that I’m a friend. “I am afraid that I have some sad news that I have to tell…”
Hey readers, that was part one. Now go to the fridge for a snack.
You have been dead for over a week. There was a small funeral attended by me, Ted, a half dozen friends from his church and the minister, his pastor who has been so kind as to send you off into the next life. I know why your ex-brother-in-law has been weeping almost nonstop. His were the only noticeable tears during the service. I sat next to him, dry-eyed with my hand on his shoulder. He may be the only person who has ever loved you, Jake. I don’t know what kind of parents you had. He says you have been out of touch with your family since you were fifteen. If there is a story there, he isn’t saying. His sister knows and sends her condolences. I’m sure she wasn’t smiling. I wonder what she’s said to your kid? He’s only four. What were you like when you were four? Did you play a lot? Run around like a manic dwarf, laughing and shouting and singing? What happened to you? Does your boy ever sing? Did you?
Ted and I have already visited once this week. He has claimed me as a friend and I have given him my consent. He is a beautiful kid. How could you ever have earned his friendship? I could almost say that he is becoming like a son to me. My own boy is far away, in Israel with his wife and two little girls. We don’t communicate often, mostly for political differences. He is a blindly-devoted Zionist and I only wish the Palestinians would kick his arrogant ass off their land. I don’t have a problem about Israel. We have to live somewhere, I guess, but the occupation has to stop. My son thinks I’m a traitor, but I still love him and he knows it and his infrequent e-mails are still redolent with shame-faced affection. My own wife died from breast cancer ten years ago and I can’t live with anyone. She had plenty to put up with from me. I always wanted my space, to be on my own, to do everything alone. I don’t even know why I bothered to get married. She was beautiful, and I was still going to synagogue and getting married is something you have to do if you are an observant Jew. I haven’t been observant in years. I still believe. Ted’s form of Christianity seems appealing but I don’t know. I’m not sure if I’m still redeemable, that maybe I’ve lasted well past my best-before date. But it is nice to think that maybe Jesus does love me. It is nice to feel wanted, after all, I suppose.
Ted swallows all that claptrap about me being one of God’s Chosen. I almost told him to please not make me throw up. If I’m God’s Chosen then what is he? If I am God’s Chosen, Jake Farmer, then what are you? Well, what are you now? A slab of chemically-embalmed rotting meat and bone moldering in the ground? But I know you are somewhere else. Maybe you’re strumming a harp while dancing on a pink cloud in Heaven? More likely you’re wiggling on a pitchfork while some junior devil barbecues your lost little ass on the flames of Hell? Or you might come back to haunt me?
Yesterday, Ted and I had lunch together. He wouldn’t let me buy him a beer. He said he moved out here from New Brunswick for university, then ran out of money so now he works in a mental health boarding home. It turns out he’s a bit older than I thought. Almost thirty. Doesn’t look it. He doesn’t live too far away from me as it turns out. He says he’s seen me shopping in the Joe’s No Frills Supermarket in the mall. Quite a needy kid, it turns out. It seems that outside of some people in his church, you were his only friend. His sister didn’t seem to mind and appeared to rely on Ted as a conduit of information. I think that she was just afraid that one day you would move back to New Brunswick, find her and hurt both her and the kid. Well, I hope she’s a little more at ease now. It turns out that she was crying when her brother told her the news. Love can be the strangest thing, I guess.
That was part two. Now look at your email, or check your Facebook status.
We are almost there. I have just taken him down that narrow little dirt trail that meets up with the wider gravel trail that ends above Sixteenth Avenue. Ted wanted to see where you died. He is carrying a small bouquet of flowers, lilies, I think, and red roses. Just where you passed me for the last time he has silently laid down the bouquet, off to the side where no one can trample it. It is a clear, sunny day, and warm, and the leaves are luminescent with the transfiguring afternoon sun. I have added to the bouquet the sky-blue hydrangea I have just picked and two orange day lilies. These are the kinds of flowers Irene used to lovingly tend and cultivate in the garden when we had that brown stucco bungalow on King Edward Avenue. Irene’s hydrangeas were a slightly darker, richer shade of blue. Incongruously, they have been growing here in the forest like wild flowers. Ted has tucked in among the flowers a photo of your infant son, his sister and one of himself along with another photo that shows all of you smiling together in front of a Christmas tree. We have been mostly silent during this walk, this small portion of my hike through this forest that I try to take almost every day now that I’m retired. On the way up the trail again towards the coffee shop I initiate your brother-in-law into the culinary marvels of the wild huckleberries, salal berries and thimbleberries that are growing everywhere. We even managed to harvest a couple of leftover salmonberries, still sweet and delicious. In more than ten years of living in Vancouver he has never seen this wonderful forest.
This little café is a well-guarded secret, surrounded by a village of townhouses occupied by university students and teachers. I thought of moving here myself, just after Irene’s death and just before my retirement. Instead this apartment in the West End came available. I had been on the waiting list and it is near the park with controlled, affordable rent. I have no regrets about starting over there, post-marriage, post Irene, post Classical Studies teaching. The young lady is on duty again. She is beautiful with a Raisin Maid or Judy Garland as Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz kind of wholesomeness. Her smile lights up everything around her and I am almost embarrassed by all this unabashed sweetness and loveliness. “Hi Sarah!” I hear Ted say as she prepares his ice mocha and her smile becomes even brighter…
On the patio we sit with our iced drinks in the shade and underneath the hanging flower baskets where a hummingbird quickly explores an electric-purple petunia. Inside a young Korean girl—I know she is Korean because we have chatted a few times: she works here part-time—is playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the upright piano inside. She plays well, and I think that with a little practice she could easily be concert material. Ted has been lingering inside for almost ten minutes talking to Sarah, whom, he has just informed me, goes to his church. There is no need to apologize. Young love is something I always like to encourage.
“Maybe it’s time you two got better-acquainted,” I say.
“She has a boyfriend.” He seems more defensive than disappointed.
“Why let that stop you?”
“They’re thinking of marriage.”
“All the better reason to get her while you can.”
“I could never do that to Stephen. He’s a really nice guy.”
“Friend of yours?”
“We hang out a bit after church services.”
“But not lately?”
“He’s pretty serious about Sarah.” I know not to put my foot in any deeper. This I have noticed about Ted. He is gentle, almost whimpish, but very defensive and will close himself up like a pugilist’s fist if I push too far.
I walk him back through the forest and see him off at the bus stop. I will be spending at least another hour or two walking among the trees. Sarah is her name, the beautiful Sarah with the goddess-radiance. But which goddess? Not Aphrodite, though she is beautiful. Certainly not Artemis or Athena. Hera? No way. Demeter? Not quite but almost. My wife Irene would have been a good fit with Demeter. She had not one green thumb but two. I still miss the garden. Demeter’s daughter? Persephone! Yes, but Persephone before Hades abducted her and her distraught mother soon cursed the earth. Before that bright innocent beauty was subsumed into the shadows of death.
I have brought the umbrella. I did not leave expecting rain today, but now this bank of cloud is moving in. He doesn’t know about the umbrella in your wheel spokes. I am not going to tell him. The sun is fading and no longer linger the blotches of golden fire that were gilding the tall trunks of Douglas fir. It is early evening and nearly everyone has gone home. There is no further infestation of joggers and cyclists in the trails. They can really spoil it for the rest of us, the solitary walkers, the dog walkers, small families, and couples in love. They move too fast and make way too much noise. The forest is silent again. I feel almost like I’m the sole human being underneath these trees. There is a sound of distant thunder and something wet has touched my shoulder. It is like a tropical cloudburst and the golf umbrella barely shelters me against getting soaked. The bus approaches and slows down by the curb. The girl next to whom I am seated reminds of Irene when I married her and I have to force myself to not stare at her. She also looks a little like Sarah. Form her carryall she pulls out her cell phone and her beauty vanishes like a broken spell as she hunches over to text a message. I only hope she has the good manners to not talk on it till she's off the bus. On the way back through the forest, just before the rain began, I passed again the orange day lilies, and I plucked and ate three petals. Irene in the summer used to serve them in salads. They have a rich, mildly peppery flavour. They die quickly, daily, and this why the are called day lilies. At least tis is what Irene told me. the perfidy of the flesh, the brevity of beauty, this brief flourishing of life swallowed up in eternal darkness. I almost wish Sarah would dump her boyfriend and take up with Ted, if for no other reason than to save her from her descent into the Realm of the Dead that the earth not be cursed and winter be eternally deferred. When I get off the bus I see that the rain has stopped and for a few grateful moments I lose myself in the swelling crowd of young people who are on their way to the beach to see the fireworks, and I look and crane my neck in vain to see one single god or goddess or angel walking among them.
The end. Still awake? Hello? Hello!!!
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