BY MAX KLEMENT
Copyright is held by the author.
ONE DAY, a boy wandered up the bald hill near the ocean to the old man’s house. The man stood unmoving like a historic statue on the porch — the sun-bleached boards as parched and cracked as his face — looking out at the weather. The boy sat on the hard ground nearby making mounds of some little smoothed-out stones that got dashed there, the hems of his jeans unsuccessfully rolled-up to keep them dry on the beach. They didn’t notice each other — or at least didn’t acknowledge each other — for a good five minutes: the boy playing with his stones, and the old man looking out to the edge of sea and sky.
The boy looked up and the old man looked down at the same moment.
“What the hell you doin’ down there, boy?” he bellowed.
“’Splorin’,” the boy muttered. He stood uncomfortably, looking down at his feet with his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
“What’s that? What’d you say, boy?”
“I’m ’splorin’,” the boy repeated, louder. He looked-up sideways at the old man, squinting, with one hand shielding his eyes from the brilliant midday sun. His hair, lightened by long summer days outdoors, flopped on and off the back of his hand with the breeze — as if it had a mind of its own.
He leaned towards the boy, still rooted to the porch, as if to get a better look without abandoning his spot. His white hair waved, his red face shook, and he beat the air with a big square fist. “’Splorin’?! You’re up here explorin’? You outta your mind, boy?”
“No sir.”
“What’d you mean, boy, what’d you mean, no sir?! ’Course you’re outta your mind! Would you look at that sky out there?” He jabbed a big hand at the horizon. A layer of black clouds sat like mud on the edge of things. “Look at them clouds! This ain’t no day to be out explorin’. A boy like you could get washed out to sea and wouldn’t stop till you bumped into Africa, you hear?”
“Yes sir.” The boy picked up a stick and began idly scraping it against the rough ground.
“Yes sir, no sir. Is that all you can say, boy?”
“No sir. I can say lots of things.” He looked up at the old man. “Teacher says I talk too much.”
“What? Why there ain’t no such thing as talkin’ too much! I been livin’ up here alone on this here hill for some thirty years, and if it wasn’t for the noise that comes outta my mouth, I wouldn’t know for sure if I was alive half the time.” He paused. “Your teacher a lady?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well,” he paused again, looking thoughtful, “in that case, you better listen to her, and not me.” He lowered himself awkwardly onto the porch. “Look here boy, if you’re fixin’ on just standin’ there jawin’, you may as well help me with this stack of wood here — gotta sort them branches into piles . . . smaller ones here and bigger ones there, just like they’re meant to be in this here world.”
The boy sat on the edge of the porch uncertainly — not too close to the man and not too far — and started pulling the smaller sticks from the stack of branches and arranging them neatly in their own pile. “You really been livin’ up here all alone for thirty years?”
“Well, God only knows women are always right — maybe you do talk too much! What’s it your business that’s got you askin’ me a question like that?”
“Well, you said —”
“Of course, I did,” he cried, gripping the sides of his head with two great hands, the enormous effort of holding his brains inside his skull making his face red again. “Didn’t you believe me when I said it first-time round? Or was you just pretendin’ to listen to me? Your teacher ever tell you to pay attention when a body’s speakin’?”
“Yes sir. She said you should always pay attention, even if you’re feelin’ that you’re not likin’ it.”
The man nodded, calmer again, and gestured with his chin to suggest that the boy continue sorting sticks, as he continued to neatly pile the large branches by size — like a thing well-done, with a sure hand that had done the same many times. “Well, that’s damn good advice, if I ever heard any. What’s your name, boy?”
“Daniel.”
“Good name. Where d’you live?”
“Down at the Ames place.”
“Damnit! You’re not payin’ attention again! Boy, can’t you think straight? I just got done tellin’ you that I been alone up here for some thirty years — I don’t know no folks, and no folks know me — now how the hell would you expect… don’t look so squeamish, boy — you ain’t plannin’ on bein’ sick, are you?”
“No sir.”
“Good.” He looked up at the growing line of dark clouds on the horizon and shook his head. His eyes, usually the bright blue of the ocean, were dulled by the heavy swell forming as the sky gradually darkened. He looked back at the boy thoughtfully. “Now boy, you got any natural landmarks round your place that you can report to me?”
“Well, we got the biggest, oldest, meanest oak tree in the whole wide world.”
The man stopped sorting and pointed at the boy with one stick still in his big hand, the end dancing like a conductor beating time. “There ain’t no such thing as a mean oak tree, boy. You got some tricky oak trees, and some downright crazy oak trees, but there ain’t no mean oak trees. You got that? Good. Now what else?”
“We got a big old dusty rock that nobody ain’t never moved an inch and never will.” The boy slid his little pile of sticks forward and took another handful to sort.
“Well, that don’t surprise me none boy. I ain’t never met a rock that was made to travel. What else?”
“We got the deepest, coldest, most awful, killingest creek —”
“— in the whole wide world. Yeah, I know. That ain’t Johnson’s Creek, is it?”
“Dunno.” He pushed a thin twig between two warped porch boards and smiled as it stood upright on its own, trembling in the gathering breeze.
“If somethin’s gotta name, boy, you gotta use it.”
“What’s yours?”
“Now don’t be gettin’ sassy — you sassin’ me boy? You can just call me sir. Now this creek of yours, does the bank slope-in kinda even like — then drop off real sudden?”
“Yes sir.”
“Is it real green with big round rocks on the bottom?”
“Yessir!”
“Does it have the biggest, ugliest old brown fish swimmin’ round the bottom with their mouths open like this?” He made a grotesque gesture.
“Yes, it does!”
“And does it have little bugs with outrigger legs all stretched-out huggin’ onto the top of the water like their lives depended on it?”
“That’s it! That’s it!”
“Well damn boy, that’s Johnson’s Creek you’re livin’ on, and it’s a long ways away. What the hell are you doin’ up here?”
“’Splorin’ sir.”
“Boy — we been through this once before.”
Daniel stared up at the old man. They watched each other silently for a few moments, their stick sorting forgotten.
“Mister, why’re you up here all alone? Don’t you like people?”
“’Course I like people — ’specially women. Why I couldn’t… here, look boy, I’ll try and explain this to you. See this here stick?” He took a moderately sized branch from the pile they were sorting in his enormous raw hands and broke it over his knee. “Now that ain’t no big deal, right? But here’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you: a body could hurt another… See these hands?” He held out his fists, each larger than the next, like two fleshy hams. “Look at these hands, boy, look at them — they’re hard hands, they done their share of hard work . . . I wouldn’t mean to hurt nobody, not on purpose anyway, I wouldn’t ever want to — and I ain’t never hurt a soul, and that’s a truth you can take with you. But just knowin’, just knowin’ that I could hurt someone; just knowin’ that I could kick a woman round the room like some poor dog, even though I wouldn’t never want to, boy . . . even thinkin’ that I could hurt someone — well, them evil thoughts just drove me right out from underneath everythin’, and I ended up out here alone . . . but I guess you’re too young to understand that boy, ain’t you?”
He stood quietly and looked out at the sky.
“Mister?”
“Yeah boy?”
“You wouldn’t really never hurt nobody, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t. That’s just the point. I ain’t never hurt nobody, and I never would, but I know I could — even if I didn’t ever want to.” He looked sadly at his hands. “Now get up on your feet… you better run boy, or you’ll catch your death. It’s gonna be comin’ down soon — and from the looks it’s like as much to be the end of the world if you’re askin’ me — you’re gonna be right glad to be inside when it does. Now get on with you — git!”
He stepped to the edge of the porch and lightly smacked the boy’s bottom. The boy ran halfway down the hill, then stopped and looked back.
“Mister?!”
“What now boy?”
“Goodbye mister!”
“Yeah . . . bye Daniel . . . Get on with you!”
He watched the boy race down the hill until he was out of sight, then shifted his gaze to look at the storm as it advanced on the shore. Unstoppable, unchangeable, incomprehensible, indifferent. He shook his head, awed by the enormity of it, and whispered: “When’re you gonna wash me out to sea? When’re you gonna cleanse my soul so I can be with my people again — so I can be me again?”
***
Max Klement, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College (Bronxville, NY), is a writer and retired psychotherapist living in the Chicago area. His writing can be found in the Figwort Literary Journal, Literally Stories, The Raw Art Review, and in an upcoming issue of BarBar Magazine.