TUESDAY: Of Chiromancers and Albatrosses

BY LINCOLN HAYES

Copyright is held by the author.

THE SUN melted slowly, dispersing across ocean in a glittering kaleidoscope of orange and red. A lone albatross pursued the horizon, stretched wings beating occasionally to sustain its momentum.

Darwin Beaudry sat morosely on the cliff’s edge — chin on hands, elbows on knees — observing nature’s theatre. His usually meticulous comb-over danced gaily in swirling gusts that traced the precipice and burst upwards over its rim. Normally, he would have tucked it firmly into his tattered newsboy cap, but he no longer cared.

He was exhausted.

For 18 years he had been driven by righteous fervour — to eschew his destiny and expose the old chiromancer. Yet, the greater and more sustained his efforts, the more comprehensively her prophecies were fulfilled.

On his 21st birthday, his mother, Henrietta, eager to know what sort of man her son would become, took him to see Madame Clarice, whose legend permeated the French Quarter’s psyche. A Cajun woman of age and origins unknown, the close-knit community both revered and feared the infallibility of her fortunes told. So eerily accurate was she, that it had become customary for those innocently passing by her ramshackle abode to wear gloves, or thrust hands in pockets, lest she spy their palms from afar and screech out their immutable fate.

Henrietta was unassailably devoted to the mysterious arts. As a young woman, she had been to Madame Clarice, who had revealed that she would have a long but modest life and be blessed with a solitary son. “Like an eagle he will soar!” she had proclaimed, in cryptic glee. Thus, upon his coming of age, she had dragged the remonstrating Darwin to see the fabled palmist, for the revelation of his fate.

It was not the triumph she had expected.

Darwin would never forget that dank, acrid room, replete with gaudy velvet, taxidermied terrors, and its fetid aroma of Pall Malls, formaldehyde and knock-off Chanel No. 5.

With barely a glance at his hands, Clarice’s cragged, honey-hued visage had turned a pallid shade of white. Obscenely mascaraed eyes darted nervously between son and mother. At first, she had refused to continue, attempting to shoo them from her parlour with shrieked invectives and a flurry of claws. Unwavering, Henrietta’s insisted, and Clarice morosely revealed the young man’s fate.

“A miserable, impoverished life you will live, Master Darwin,” she cooed cruelly, caressing his hands coldly with nicotine-stained talons. “Briefly (a fleeting moment!) like a bird you will fly! Then, on your 40th birthday — not one day sooner or later — you will perish and be gone from this earth.”

Horrified, mother and son had bolted from Madame Clarice’s presence and within days had put New Orleans and the French Quarter as far in their rear-view mirror as their means would take them.

For the following 18 years, Henrietta had dedicated herself to a life of Southern Comfort, denial and vicarious disappointment.

Darwin, on the other hand, vowed to disprove Clarice’s prophecies as the rantings of a demented crone. But as much as he tried, he could not. Everything he attempted in life, he failed — miserably. After a litany of rejections from universities and colleges, he settled for a life of toil, futilely trying to maintain an endless string of meaningless jobs, simply to make ends meet.

He would wake at dawn and struggle until dusk, sharing a small, two-roomed shack with his mother. Beyond cooking his meagre meals, Henrietta had withdrawn from his life, unable to conceal her disappointment at what the fates had dealt them both.

When he sought solace in the company of others, there was nothing Darwin could offer to pique their interest (other than the time he went to see a palm-reader in New Orleans). Instead, infrequent moments of leisure would find him on a park bench, feeding days-old bread to pigeons and squirrels, who would audaciously accept his offerings then scurry away.

As the years passed, he grew weary and his body began to fail; his bones creaked and ached. His hairline receded and a once-ruddy and vibrant complexion assumed a lifeless, waxy pallor.

Now, destitution and hopelessness climaxing as his portentous birthday approached, he was done. Exhausted and depleted, Darwin had finally conceded the impossibility of defying the lines etched in his palms.

Perched on the ledge, at 39 years and 364 days old, almost every word of Madame Clarice’s prediction had manifested.

In a matter of hours, her prophecy would be complete, but in one final act of defiance, he would cheat the old harpy of her ultimate triumph. Then, and only then, would he rest.

The night grew colder as the final allocated minutes of his life ticked away. The wind intensified and lightning flashed on the horizon and, as midnight approached, he willed himself to his feet, unsteadily facing the oncoming storm.

“CLARICE!” he screamed. “YOU’VE TAKEN MY WHOLE LIFE — I’M NOT GIVING YOU THIS!”

He checked his watch; 11:59 p.m.

He spread his arms wide, like the long-since vanished albatross, and lurched forward into the void, ready to meet death’s embrace on the jagged rocks below.

As he fell, a great burst of wind gushed upwards, and instead of dropping, Darwin found himself hovering, horizontally, just beyond the cliff’s edge. Suspended above raging waters, he wriggled and squirmed against the furious gale to adjust his trajectory downwards to hasten his descent. Seconds passed as if they were hours and, finally, his exhaustion complete, he surrendered to the futility of his struggle.

Once more, he extended his arms and embraced the wind, allowing it to carry him up, into the air and out over the ocean. He felt exhilarated. Euphoric. Finally, Darwin felt like his life truly had meaning.

Then, at the apex of his flight, a faint digital beeping pierced the roaring gale, and without looking, he knew. It was his watch, heralding midnight, and his 40th — final — birthday.

The wind receded instantly, and he plummeted ferociously downward to an immutable fate, predestined by the palms of his hands.

***

Lincoln Hayes is a resident of Perth, Western Australia, where he works as a government policy officer. Although qualified as an archaeologist, his greatest discovery was a love of storytelling that outweighed his passion for digging holes and sifting dirt.