You have entered the hundred chapter garden.
Eldon’s first conversation in decades.
The way mud clouds clear water
‘I have to tell you something’, is the phrase that keeps popping up. I lie awake and talk to Auryn as if she's visiting. Making up conversation. Telling her about garden stuff. Giving her the tour. A vague contour of a woman walks with me while I talk and talk. Mentioning details, intricacies of the whys and hows. I explain my five-year cycle and how I am slowly getting the hang of stump maintenance. I leave five strong shoots, you see, on the stool, and then cut the stalks. Thick as my wrists is how I want them. I will let her taste what I call fire-fruit. They've never been as good as this year. And now is best, cause everybody here is after them. But the chatter is deflection. I am stirred. The way mud clouds clear water. When the sediment of my pond is disturbed and murky swirls dance like something wishing to be alive. Reaching toward the warm light, seeking to materialise. To rise from the water, with the water. In the same manner, unsettled remnants darken my body. Random and incoherent thoughts intrude upon my feigned dialogue. The woman named Auryn is not here. She might not even exist.
Troubled is what they called this. Old stuff wandering in. Strangely familiar and utterly alien.
I remember thoughtlessly flipping light switches. Suddenly, I hold the steering wheel of the car, waiting for a traffic light to change colour. Putting two spoonfuls of light brown cane sugar in my morning coffee while reading, even the taste visits me. Locking the front door before I leave for work. Me and Juniper romping on the lawn. She was seven or eight. Completely at ease. I was in awe. Her trust. That early summer evening, I laughed to cover my tears. Ticklish, she cackled, ticklish, ticklish, ticklish. I can hear how she kept repeating the word while torturing me. The sound sharp as a fresh razor-blade. The image cuts. Just to see if the scars are still capable of bleeding. June hasn't been with me for a long time. And now, in the dark of my unlit shelter, her cackling shreds the old wound, the scent of her hair a chemical attack, the moment flares up as if within reach and I sit up. My bed surrounded by the old demons. None of them ever left. They never will.
Panic lurks in sleepless nights.
I get up, out of my nest, and decide to break my own rule. Because I must. I light the oil lamp. With hands shaking, I strike one of the sacred matches. The burst of firelight drives back the invading. Just in time to keep my spirit from dissolving. The drenched wick easily catches its kin. The finite flame burns to the end of the stick. I let go as it starts eating my fingertips. On the dirt floor it is reduced to smoke that twists and curls and then fades. No more fuel does that.
But it has lighted the lantern.
I live without lights. Moon and sun guide my waking hours. Inner light ignites my sleep. I no longer have artificial light. They all died on me. The lantern is for emergencies only.
Today, against all odds, one set of electricity-powered light-emitting diodes came alive again, and now, a few hours later, I need another lamp to be on, to not run scared of the ever-present dark. Lights blind as much as they illuminate.
I have to tell you something…
Auryn. A woman's voice, smooth and warm, promised to call again. I am lifted by hope to scary heights.
I must tell her.
But not yet. She's a new bird. Landed on my patch by accident. Don't scare by sudden moves.
The room looks strange in the golden light of the petroleum burning the cotton. I see it through her eyes. Suddenly, a guest in my own house. This is my place. My home. I do not belong here, still do not belong to all these things. They're not mine. Despite the intense relationship I have with every single item, I am here temporarily.
I am here for life. Only for life.
I calculate my age. I am not sure. I must be in my late fifties. Yesterday's thought about the ten-thousand days may sound crazy, but isn't that far off. Most of the stuff I have is of a similar age. Things get old. Fade. Life renews. Life must be allowed to move on. It does so anyway. Despite my efforts.
I sit shaking my head in silence in what I call the kitchen, while I burn fuel. Precious fuel producing precious light in quite a smelly way. A scarecrow for shadows. That's what the lantern is. Extending the day while it is night. Firelight doesn't help. If anything, it creates more of the night crows, the silent birds of the dark. Fire enlivens the shadows, invites them to dance. Starlight abides the night too. Brings death to life. The nearness of the immeasurable.
The moon is a reminder. Reflecting the sun. Making clear it is not here, the sun is far, it reassures. The moon shows light and shadow shift alongside. Push and pull. Wax and wane. Without the moon, we'd forget the sun every single time the tables turn. Every single day would end. And still, despite the moon, every single evening as the light fades, I struggle to trust.
I am hurled back from a pitch-dark inner emptiness onto the kitchen table like a meteorite. Woken by the phone. The strained muscle in my neck now solidified. My face imprinted with the table's woodgrain. My mouth dry. Damn, I left the lantern on while I dozed off. Hours of fuel wasted. It is very early. Just before sunrise. Before the birds.
The piano plays again.
Joy flares up. Erasing gravity as if I have grown wings. I hurry out, light-footed as a chick leaving the nest, my limbs struggling to keep up.
Who gave these paths so many curves? I want to barge straight through the potatoes. I want to fly. I might be able to hover an inch or two. The toes on my bare feet combing through the crowns of strawberries, my chest caressed by grain tips. But I run.
And then stop. I am naked. I forgot. Is it important to not be naked? To be dressed? I stand doubting. Going back means maybe missing the call. Not an option.
"I couldn't sleep."
She says without introduction. My heart is pounding.
"I hope I didn't wake you, did you run?"
I nod.
"Yes, yes... you did... I did…"
She waits.
The words again stuck in my throat. I don't even know which words. I unfold a blanket to cover my skin. Nothing comes to mind. Nothing in the form of talk. As if I have forgotten how to speak. Polite responses that are too ridiculous to even consider, drift by like a troupe of the mentally ill. Clusters of weirdly dressed questions fill my mouth, dancing. They move my lips, but no sound is produced.
I yawn.
Auryn laughs. A relieved cascading. Summer rain. Splashing my face first thing in the morning. Diving in, naked.
"I have a thousand questions, Eldon. But I don't want to force you, push you. Just take your time. During the day, we would be interrupted, so that's why I called early. We have time. And I am eager to learn about you and your garden, how you….well, just tell me anything you are willing to share."
I see her chest. How the collar bones meet. How the skin stretches over her rounded shoulders. I shake my head.
"Do you…", I clear my throat, "do you have a garden?"
"Mm," she says, "we are planning to. But it's not easy. Not easy at all."
I agree. A million failures wander as splinters beneath my skin. It takes time.
"A lifetime," I say, then sniff a giggle, "...several. A garden can easily kill you, as easy as the other way around."
She sighs.
"But you are still here."
I breathe in sharply. Yes, I am.
I must tell you something.
"Water," I say.
"Yes," says Auryn.
I am thirsty. Restless from not doing what I normally do. My routine. This is weird. Nice, draining and weird.
"What do you have for breakfast?" She asks, "On normal days, when you are not distracted by…"
"Water," I didn't let her finish her sentence, "I drink water. Then go here, to uh…meditate, I guess. I pick whatever is ripe during the day. Make one meal. One fire, no more. Or not. A duck lasts me four, sometimes five, mostly four days. Once a week…",
Is it a week? I dunno. Count my fingers for the different days defined by different doings. I think I have a cycle of nine. Roughly. Not seven.
"….I bake bread. Fermented corn. Not wheat."
I realise Cornday is my Sunday. I have a sequence of nine days defined by a task, which I count as a week. How strangely funny that I wasn't aware of this fact.
"… Almost lost the corn. Years ago. In the beginning. The rains were early, and too much. Three hailstorms in a row. And then it didn't stop raining for…"
That is so long ago. Feels like another life. Like it is someone else's memory.
"That was forty-four, before the dry spell."
Her voice lost the melody, saying that. And yes, she is right. It was before the desert years. Before the trees were established. Before the garden was a garden. Those rains have formed me, have washed away a period. Was that twenty-forty-four? Only three years after…
"A lot has changed, Eldon."
I sit and nod. Look at the phone in my shrine. I just stare and let thoughts drift by. Normal is an illusion. Even when nothing is normal, our head forges the same familiarity. Makes you forget how things were by emphasising what you already know. Normal is grace. Normal is a lullaby. Memories hide the forgetting.
"Won't you take me outside? I can hear birds singing."
Somehow I have assumed touching the phone would disrupt the magic. Would break the spell.
"Can I pick you up?"
"If only," she says with a giggle.
I crawl onto my knees.
"It's just sound." She says. "We haven't been able to do anything fancy like imagery, the phone doesn't function, isn't repaired, we just log onto the hardware…"
"We?"
I can hear her breathe in after I have stopped her with that question. Dripping with suspicion. She has used we before, but I ignored it. Now I need to know. It wasn't a simple case of wrong call. Not a random encounter. They, whoever they are, have repaired, hooked onto, broken into, violated this specific phone to get to me. Some strange new technology operating at a distance? What distance? Why would anyone bother to hack Puddy's old phone? Who the fuck calls at four in the morning? Are they in a hurry? Unbothered by nighttime?
"What do you want from me?"
It is no more than a mumble, but it is a short serrated knife that cuts the frail new thread. I can no longer stand to be close, to be inside this stuffy tomb. My hand lashes out and slams the speaker against the temple's wall. Ending its life. Silencing the intruders. I crawl out into the open like a rabid dog. Growling, howling, crying, dying. I tear my throat out in a scream that shuts up the chorus, makes the birds fly up in a sudden rustle, a shiver that runs through the entire canopy, followed by a short silence in which my panicked panting is the only thing left.
Then things resume back to normal. Everything around me is unchanged.