The Stone & The Green
by Craig Waltman
USA
November 2019
It was nearing the close of the end of the first Great War. Its final chapters were being written in smoke, tears, fire, and blood, as the German’s zeppelins – this their infernal war machines – wrought their havoc upon the earth, nightly raining down their iron of terror upon a once merry ole London, from horizon to horizon, for miles all around…all a-fiery blaze she was.
And was soon to be my young world rendered as unto ashes, all but ashes, nothing but air castles of cloud and stormy blue, all stitched up together, it was, with a spider’s web waiting to be unwound…so very fragile it all was.
When first I was sent to my mother’s next of kin, her very own dearest brother was he, after all my family was nicked (stolen) from this earth in a single bombing raid, which left me deaf in my right ear, as a blinding shard pierced the circle of my eye, and so likewise pocked marked my body with all its shrapnel scars that a soul could possibly bare. To this very day, in my one good ear, I can still hear the dying screams of the maimed as London burned. I can still smell their smoke as in the very air around me at times.
Yet, even now it gives me the shivers just to think of it. It’s as if only it occurred this morning still. So, now being the last of the Culpepper’s was I, I started anew with my uncle, as far from London as I could get without hitting water I thought. Most sadly, he had lost his good arm in the battle of the Somme, and his poor wife and daughter had succumbed to the ill effects of influenza, in all the selfsame year mind ya. I can still remember at times he would just sit there with the morbs (melancholy) creeping all over him real bad like, and it was all that he could do to keep from bawling his grey eyes out for all his loss…as at times I would catch him staring across the room at me.
For sure I wasn’t much to look at anymore, I reckon, on account, of all of my scares and all. I can only figure it is because I once favored my own dear mother so much, in which he loved with all his heart and would often say, “Until my belly hurt.” Oh, how we missed her so! But really now I think he was crying for all of us, I could clearly tell by the hurt in his eyes and how he would often turn to hide them and say, “Don’t mind me, son, it’s just a speck of dust in my eye.”
But even still were there happier times to be had, for that’s when I first became familiar with Mr. Mobley in my wonderings, and so I can tell I’ve known him since I was wisps high to a wee sparrow’s wing as such the saying goes. We became real chuckaboos (close friends) in every word of the sense we did, none could be any closer as we once were. Why, I can remember he even painted my little, rusty wagon the loveliest shade of red, and would always fill it with all kinds of fruit from his garden with never a single suggestion from me. I never-ever asked him once; he just did it from the kindness of his own heart I can only guess.
Now still being no more than a lad was I, I figured I knew everything the world could fling at me. I can take an arrow or two, for I seen it all a hundred times and a score or two more before I surely had. Now I hadn’t to be told twice and thus my course was set…topsy-turvy as it may be and how I made it to manhood is beyond me, I’ve should have died countless times.
Oh yes, there were to be bumps on the road and plenty of near misses to be had that’s for sure…when I should have wrapped the bumper around the tree. Yes, but even so I can still recall Mr. Mobley, through the vast fog of years lived just down our little one horse lane, upon that dusty old road to nowhere, really no more than a pig trail it was, upon a couple acres was he, which was bounded by a trouser high, stone hedge (dry stone wall) all being wildly climbed about by an Irish rose it was. Strange though I thought how it lacked the convenience of a gate, and I, of course, fancied it to be an odd sort of thing…no gate that is, and if I might even be so bold to tell not even so much as a sheep’s creep could be spied…at least not by my good eye. There I would just see him sit as a frozen hero of some kind, as from another time, like some knight of old was he for the better…the most finer part of the day a-plucking away as a maestro would on his lovely fiddle with a silvery fox named Pete just quietly resting upon his lap, with all manner of birds swarming about his head, in the coolness of the day. Yes, he would just sit there whilst peddling the fruits of his land for nothing really much I must declare.
A penny here, a penny there and gladly gifting away he did all his leftovers to whomsoever needed it, now bringing he did I witnessed a much needed beauty to a war-torn world filled with all kinds of misery and strife. Always was he just under the golden leaf awning of his broad trees, which appeared all to be a thousand years old if not only a day more judging from this their most ancient appearance…their greatly size. Even now I can still see him as if this very instant always wearing that stubble, bristly, brimmed hat of his with his rosy muffler as shielding his face, so as all you could see were his bright eyes peering through, and oh how they sparkled, how they shined for they were most bright at that, indeed, they were.
It is true that no one ever clasped an eye upon his face as the old timers would say, “He’s always been here even when there wasn’t a trail to get back in here, then.”
And even some more would dare speak, “He been here even before this thing called dirt,“ I would hear them say with a laugh.
And finally the very oldest among them would tell,”Even down to that same tired, old hat and clothes he wears, surely they can’t be the same ones, for by now they would have worn out for sure.” And as they would continue to wag their heads and ask in wonder,” It just can’t be…it’s not possible is it…is it?”
And so the talk did go about like he was something of the sort of a gorgon, rendering them as if unto very stone with a single glimpse upon his naked face, they would always gossip amongst themselves. And so one day I inquired about his coverings as he told, “Laddie Boy,” for he always called me that, “It’s an old war wound I received in the service of our good king. Verily, his majesty’s enemies have giving yours truly a beauty mark to remember them by.”
Indeed. He had a most peculiar way of saying things he did. It was as if he was all but a hundred years out of step with time it seemed. And I, of course, being a child who knew everything, and had no need of instruction at all, believed without question. I took him at his every word and so it became as gospel in my young head not to be judge, or reproved for the most part, for I could tell the difference when he was trying to tell stories to entertain, or so I thought.
Besides, I knew him to be a good and generous man, for he used to carve me little, wooden animals of each and every kind. Every day he would have me a new one afresh, and why before long I could have filled a whole ark with them if I so desired, for so many they were. But even still strange though how I thought, he never ventured once beyond the protective confines of his stone hedge, for I, of course, being a helpful lad would fetch him whichever thing he needed most, which, indeed, was very scant, some sugar, perhaps some tea every now and again…a bit of cloth…some leather, but whatever it was it wasn’t very much I do recall. It was as if he hadn’t a need in the world, not a single care.
I can still close my eyes and see his old, dappled cat a-traveling atop the coping stones, its well-worn path ‘round and ‘round the green she went with her softly pitter-patter, always jumping into his ready arms when he called out to her, “My Fair Lady Friend Dear.” He would always say with the kindest voice, and too it was as if she answered his ever beck and call she did. In fact, no one could recount a time that he did not have her. She must’ve been very old, but in truth her years did not show, for she remained spry as a kitten with every leapful bound I couldn’t help but notice…so always very playful she was. So being an inquisitive lad, I asked him how old she was, just for my curiosity’s sake as he replied, “Oh dear Lord, she’s nearly as old as I.”
And then he went on to say,” I’ve always held cats in my keep. They are good for going about the business of taking care of rodents and such…if you get my meaning. And too they make for good company they do…who couldn’t ask for anything more.”
And then he went on to inform,” However, people have not always taking a shine to them, though. I can remember once upon a time, long ago there was a blight which swept through the land like a burning fever it was, and nearly all that it touched died in their tracks. As the walking dead they were, and all they had to do was fall down and they would never get back up again.”
Then he closed his eyes as if he was peering deep inside of his head and told like if he was in some other far off place and time, “The stench of death hung as a heavy cloud, a terrible lingering it was as the funeral fires burned day and night with open graves piled high, as too the rats perished in the very streets around us for the disease they carried. Oh, it was a perilous wonder which caused men’s hearts to fail them in fear.”
Then he said,” By the thousands… the thousands they slew the poor cats as if they were to blame, but, alas, it was no remedy for the pestilence only worsened through their misguided efforts.”
Then there came a pause held by a long sigh as he shrugged his shoulders and revealed ”For they even killed my own sweet, sweet, dear Annabelle, and spared not her wee kittens in the least, all for except My Fair Lady Friend Dear which I kept hide away in my pocket. Yes, they burnt me out for at the time they called it witchery for having them, which, of course, I knew nothing of the sort. And so being persuaded at the end of a pitchfork I left with nothing but what I held in my pockets. And so with my fiddle at my side I and came here to die, I did, and perhaps play a song or two in the wait.”
And then he clasped his hands together and he went on to say, “Laddie Boy, their perpetual lunacy was most maddening, it had befallen them all. So, I fled as far from their idiocy my old, wore out bones could carry me, and fell, I did, upon this very spot to meet my maker.”
Then he told, ”I once attended their parishes, a mile wide were they but only ankle deep as it turned. Wolves, wolves, all wolves they were pretending to be sheep without any Christian charity …that was a dirty, rotten thing to do but they did it anyway!”
I could plainly hear the soreness in his voice by his telling of it, when before I thought he hadn’t a care in the world, I was wrong, if anything he cared too much, he cared most of all. So, yet again time slowly marched on as the days dropped off one by one and I, of course, being a most persistent child would ask him about his family, if he had any pictures, an image for me to see, and him having none said, ”Oh, I dare not gaze upon them, for portraits are as tombstones, only painful reminders of once was and never again shall be. As ghosts upon canvas they are, phantoms on glass, only shadows they now will only ever be, at times I can’t bare the sadness to think.”
Then he told as if he was looking straight through me, “The world passes away as one generation stands upon the bones of the generation which came before. Oh, Laddie Boy, a ponderous mountain it now is, but I remain the same. All that I’ve known and loved has passed through the vail of this life and have gone from here. Their once familiar faces have all become strangers to me now, I believe I’ve lived much too long.”
Then he told, ”It seems, my child, the good Lord won’t take me and the Devil won’t have me. What is a poor man to do you wonder?”
And after a moment I thought and asked with what I’m sure must’ve been a bewildered look upon my face,” What are you saying, you can’t die?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he explained, ”sometimes I a-hear Saint Peter a-calling me just upon the other shore. I sense he’s waiting there for me with my family still.”
Then he said as if though he was trying to cheer me a little, “Now chin up Laddie Boy, you can rest assure if I go before (when the shadow of the ax befalls me) I’ll be putting in a good word for ya, and I’ll tell your mother and father what a fine friend you’ve been to me and My Fair Lady Friend Dear and good ole sweet Pete, too.”
Then he said,” Aw, let’s think no more of this, let’s play another song and I’ll learn you the words.”
And so we spoke no more of it that day, it was as if we played and sang all of our worries away, oh we made such a time of it…it was such fun. But even still always behind the wall I saw him with his Fair Lady Friend Dear never once wondering out his green confines. Even during the heavy, white drifts of winter it always remained in leaves like some virtual Garden of Eden it was…with its bowers of branches with fruit upon each and every tree, with the Irish roses always in full bloom. It was as if time had turned a blind eye to it just like Mr. Mobley’s clothes. And I wondered how could such a thing ever be as one day he told, “Now I believe I will tell you, every stone I tore from the ground with my own two hands… every fruit tree I planted with the sweat of my brow and the land bore out the rest. The years pass as but days, sunrise…sunset…sunrise…sunset, until, alas, all I see is the day. The sun forever endures…darkness cannot dim my eyes.”
And then he said, “When I came here there wasn’t a soul, as I told you before I came here to die as old as I was, but death would not take me.”
Then he revealed as if I was the first he had ever confided in, ”You see this wall, it took me years to raise it without a tool, a spade broke not the earth once, and through the course of events I found every day I got a bit stronger. As the Irish rose I would not wither, and soon I found I had more than enough years to spare and then some.”
And then he went on to say, ”I have a book of stories in which to tell you, and they all tell the same tale, sunrise…sunset… sunrise… sunset…never again to be kissed by the cool of the night nor see its silvery moon winding upon sails of starlight unfurled.”
And that’s when I began to sense an air of sadness about him at times, as the world just outside his stone hedge passed him by, and being I not a dull boy asked, ”I’ll give you a penny for your thoughts,” as my mother would often say when she seen I was blue.
And thus was his reply, ”Aye, Laddie Boy, my memory has become as pages of parchment with its ink slowly fading away, I have all but forgotten now. All I know is sunrise…sunset…sunrise…sunset…a grim certainty is this truth.”
“What is this truth?” I asked and this is what he said, ”No, there’s nothing which abides under the sun anew, it’s all happened before as a whirly top a-turning round and round she goes again and again…the same book of stories…sunrise…sunset…sunrise… sunset…all is the conceit of vanity hidden behind a mask.” And then he thought deeply for a moment and said, ”All be it still the same pig with a different color of rouge, I would gladly trade all my yesterdays for tomorrow’s hope and what it may bring forth. One never knows, Laddie Boy, for tomorrow you may find your fortune.”
Every day we talked like this across his stone hedge, when one day I had finally gained enough courage and asked why he never left his garden, as now he told with eyes which looked away as if he didn’t want to say, ”For I fear I’ve been here too long. If I leave I shall surely die. Every day I cheat death for I have cheated it far too many times, and now it waits for me just beyond the stone hedge…it has a great ravenous hunger it does.”
And thus reasoning aloud I figured why he had no gate as I thoughtlessly blurted, ”What, you don’t want Death to sneak in and grab ya?”
And Mr. Mobley being quick he was taught me a lesson and said, ”Aye, Laddie Boy, be wise for death is never a thing afar off, it embraces as we speak, with every breath…just one thin blood vessel away are we from being taken at any moment. All you have to do is look over your shoulder and see the shadow of the ax is always upon us.”
And then he thought for a second and said, ”Aw, but you are wise aren’t ya? I’m so sorry, Laddie Boy, for you have seen its ugly face up close a time or two before haven’t we. You must forgive me for my memory isn’t what it used to be. I think I’ve remembered too much. It’s like my mind is all filled up and it has no place else to go but out of my fool mouth.”
But even still I could tell as a dark cloud of worry hanging over him, as I asked him why he hadn’t touched his fiddle all morning, being he made such lovely music with it all the time. And it was the first I had ever seen him angry, as he then raised his voice with a threat and rumbled, “Now cover your good ear, Laddie Boy, for sure the dung wagon is going to hit the grist mill if anyone ever tries to take me off my land, it’ll come to collie shangles ( a dog fight ) for certain I tell ya! I’ll break my fiddle over their head, for they won’t be plucking away on its strings when I’m dead and gone will they!”
For as now I could clearly see, in that which he held in his hand was a letter from some mining company, and as he quickly wadded it up in his clinched fist he confided with me as he tipped the wink and said, ”They be wanting my ores, Laddie Boy, well they want be getting any of it while I’m still kicking about topside of God’s green earth!”
But even still I could hear the concern in his voice, for at the time I hadn’t a clue he wasn’t paying any of his war taxes. A penny here, a penny there wasn’t cutting it…not by a mile and the company was therefore insinuating the land was fairly theirs, and that they would not be cutting him no square deal at all (a word, in fact, which could not be found in their phrasebook, a page torn out right along with sympathy it was) and, of course, he would be taking the whole shaft on this one for sure. For now they wanted his land something fierce like and no wasn’t any kind of answer they wanted him to be giving’em. Then going fourth with his rant he told, “The devil only gets craftier and what little we learn we soon forget, it gets wiped clean from the pages of our minds, nothing now but a mere smear mark it is lost between two worn covers!”
Then reaching down he grabbed a handful of dirt and shone, “You see this little scoop of earth is all that I know and now they’re going to take it from me. This land is as the taste of cool water to my soul, it sustains me and all which dwell here for what reasons I know not why… nothing here ever wears out. Indeed, it is of some master stroke of design it is…as by the hand of God himself.”
Then he went on with his complaint and said, “Born was I with the wrong last name with only poor man’s gold (copper) in my purse. It is truth, poverty is a rich man’s playground, for they take what all their eye desires, leaving nothing but the poor to starve. Now this earthly realm has new kings and lords over us. But, alas, they’re the same, old, portly lot always wanton with their bellies never filled, always wanting more, you know the kind who would be cutting their own throats with a fork…those kind of folks. The very kind that would be passing by way a cemetery and see nothing but buried treasure to be had.”
Then he said,” Laddie Boy, there’s only one Lord over the heaven and earth, the Lord Savior King. I’m done with the earthly kind for they be selling you the very rope they be swinging you with in the morning, all be it with a smile on their face and a thieving hand in your cold, dead pocket.”
Then he explained and said, “These bottomlands were never really worth much to nobody, I had it all to myself for a long time. And now every riffraff, Tom, Dick, and Harry find themselves here. Oh, a few people use to come and go every now and again, a family here, a family there and then they left this place to never return.”
And so I asked him where do they go, as then he looked straight at me with the most somber eyes as he pointed his finger towards the sky and told, ”Oh, Laddie Boy, they all die of something if old age doesn’t overtake them first.”
And being somewhat perplexed I asked,” When you said you fight for your king, it was king George (George V) wasn’t it?”
Oh, heavens to Betsy no my fine young fella,” he replied,” it was Henry the VI, and I’m still waiting reimbursement for my wages …their blatant about not paying people what’s their fair due don’t you know.”
Then as he wringed his hands together with the letter still caught betwixt them and said, ”I’ve been sojourning here for over four hundred years now and haven’t seen so much as a brass farthing to show for all my service…which goes without saying.” And then he joked, “But Georgy did feed us on a rather regular basis though, a chicken one day and its feathers the next.”
Then having a bit more amusement, he just always had a way of doing it like some kind of gift or something, making one feel better about themselves (for it was I, who was supposed to be trying to make him feel better, but as it turned it was the other way around ), but that was just him for ya, for he could always put a smile on my face as he then joked, ”You know, Laddie Boy, I heard tell Rome wasn’t built in a day but it sure enough burnt down in one…no reason…no rhyme. Yes, when all the world only sees a Shepherd boy, God may see a king, funny thing how the world is, one just never knows do they?”
Then as he was gazing off into the western sky he forewarned me and told, ”It appears as rain ya best be getting home now. I’ll see ya come morning my fine, young lad, if I don’t clasp an eye ya before. Be a good boy now and run along, I have to put all my butterflies (chickens) away for the coming night, and for sure I’ll have something special whittled for you on the next.”
And if I had known then what I know now…was this to be our very last day on earth together I would have never left him. For upon the following morning, as I came running up as usual, as all the other hundred times before with my little, painted, red wagon in tow behind me, just a-rattling away it was and kicking up the dust. When all of a sudden, just over the rise I seen some rather official looking men, two officers in uniform I could tell, and who was also accompanied by an angry, red-faced man, in a most fashionable, pinstriped suit, now leaping Mr. Mobley’s stone hedge. Brandishing they were some more papers as a weapon forged against him, whilst the one in the suit yelled in a threating voice, as he stamped his feet as a naughty child taken to a fit, ”It’s well half past time for you to go, whether you like it or not I’m taking possession of this property!”
And as he shooed him off with his flaying hands, as the mean-spirited would do to an old, mangy cur he further gloated,
”Do you see the ink on this paper, it gives me the privilege… now you’ve worn-out your welcome; you have five minutes to pack your belongings and get out, or we’ll have to start getting grabby with ya! (him saying this, of course, not knowing that all of Mr. Mobley’s worldly possessions he carried upon his person.)
And most harshly, when I had seen the five minutes was up, he’d really began to lay into him as he threatened, ”Do you hear, old man, or do we have to pound the wax out of your ears!? The watch tells me your time is up, and if you don’t leave this very instant we’ll be forced to put the beat down on ya, and it’ll be a good roughing up I guarantee… it won’t be nothing like your mother be giving ya!“
As then he whispered to the officer to the right of him and said, ”I want you to pluck this dodo bird real good, do you hear.”
And with but a nod of his chin the officer agreed. All mind you while all this was going on Mr. Mobley just contently played away on his lovely fiddle, pretending the whole time as not to hear a word was said (but I could clearly tell it was just all merely a front, for Mr. Mobley’s placid waters only appeared to run deep, for just beneath I beheld a swirling maelstrom was forming within his manners).
And now as I too had followed them over the hedge, and was pleading for them to leave him alone, but only would they deafen their ears towards my elegiac cries, as then the toffee-nosed (snobbish) man in the suit, with his ever present papers in hand, with all its miles of licit snippets and legal paragraphs, who I now only know as Mr. Fenton Randolph, the owner of the company, being he now in a tiff grabbed Mr. Mobley’s bow hand as reaching his wits end with him, and thus trying to illicit a response, in fact, succeeded in his crude endeavor, now making the old man (Mr. Mobley) rise to his feet as a raging storm was he, lashing out like lightning with his fiddle, now smashing it over Mr. Randolph head as he thundered, ”You want be having my fiddle once I dead and gone, I’d made sure of that!”
As then My Fair Lady Friend Dear leapt upon Mr. Randolph’s back clawing and biting the whole time. It was as if she was trying to burrow herself into his jacket, and likewise good ole Pete had clamped down on his pleated pant leg as a meaty bone to be chewed. When then quite sneakily Mr. Mobley brushed against me, now slipping something into my breast pocket as he then softly confided, ”This is yours, Laddie Boy, I wish it could’ve been more.”
As no more than the saying of this, one of the officers had begun his tussling about with him, trying hard was he to put his arm around his head, in order to lock it secure. As too the other had yanked off My Fair Lady Friend Dear, smacking her mightily against the stone hedge, whilst Mr. Randolph had loosed a heavy coping stone and landing it squarely upon poor, ole sweet Pete. And that’s when I seen all the ruffians about him, with all their fangled accoutrements and fine attire had attempted to pile onto Mr. Mobley, concluding I can only guess that the odds were in their favor, or so it seemed as he was wildly swinging and punching, fighting all the way down, cracking a jaw, busting a noise or two for sure. Now taking I seen all three men just to hold him down as he yelled, ”You bloody money grubbers, you killed My Fair Lady Friend Dear and my sweet Pete! You’ll spend an honest man’s dollar to save an ill-gotten dime would ya!?”
And too upon his breath a most frightful curse he pronounced as they were throwing him over his hedge, I remember his words still as he said, ”May all the evil you meant for me be done unto you…may their tortures never cease neither night nor day…being they forever perineal…always seeking yee rest and never finding it…not an hour…not a minutes peace to be had for ya!”
And when they had finally concluded with their throwing of’em, Mr. Randolph yelled with a red trickle just dripping down his forehead, ”You crazy, old coot, you knocked my gold tooth out! Now get up and get out of here whilst you still can, or we will break your fool legs at the knees I swear!”
And when they had followed him over, seeing that he would not move…not a twinge he made, not a wisp, they had just as quickly started to their kicking of him, as he laid there motionless on the ground as they questioned, ”Aw, are you playing dead with us now?”
“Well,” then said Mr. Randolph, “we’ll see what we can do about that…boot him all the harder, boys! It’s nothing like a little morning football to thaw the chill from your veins…let’s see if he likes the taste of heels, then!” When just as quickly one of the officers exclaimed as he recoiled in his shock, “No…no…no…no, Sir, he is dead…he’s dead as can be!”
And then he said as if he was asking for some kind of forgiveness or something, “We didn’t mean to kill ya, you old fool, but dead you are anyway.”
“Well then, “coldly replied Mr. Randolph,” one way or another he’s off my property. Now let’s take a gander at his face…be he man or beast…shall we take a peek?” And as they undone Mr. Mobley’s muffler, I couldn’t help but notice through my one, good, misty eye (it wasn’t anything at all I was expecting to see) that, in fact, Mr. Mobley did have one rather small, unremarkable scare upon his right cheek, clearly its faint thinness was nothing to moisten a stamp on a post about, so diminutively small it truly was. But the thing that was most striking about him was that he appeared to be as a young man in the Spring of his youth, in all the fullness of his prime, and how could such a thing ever be I puzzled…how and why…was it the land he said as I struggled to remember…was to be all his stories true?
But before I could pin it down with a nary a finger, as now making such a mad dash of things to conceal their crimes, the men quickly loaded away Mr. Mobley in the back of their lorry, as thrice I cried out to them.
“What are you doing…where are you taking him!?”
When finally having enough of it Mr. Fenton Randolph replied as he gave me a ringing slap to my good, left ear, ”He’s going to Potter’s Field, boy, now you best get back before I’ll give you a real rap-tap-tap and a knock.”
As he then shoved my face aside with his open hand, now splitting my lip with one of his two rings. And while yet still tasting the blood in my mouth I called out to him and said, ”You’re a dirty, rotten, murdering man!”
And then I said for reasons I know not why, it was as if from out of the mouths of babes I cried, ”Hear me, one day you shall pay for this! God won’t be mocked forever…what goes around comes around and you’ll be getting yours in spades!”
And as he slammed the door to the cab he finally told, “Whatever turns your crankshaft, boy! It takes all kinds to make the world go round. Now you had better grow up some more before I’ll give you a real good lesson, do ya hear, or do you want some more of what I gave you before!?”
And then as he hammered the door with his balled up fist, they peeled away in a great petrol cloud of oily smoke a-squealing and a-knocking all the way. And as I seen the lorry which carried Mr. Mobley turning the last corner, now out of sight was he…was I to be left there standing all alone with only my thoughts, feeling I hadn’t much of a friend left in the world anymore, with a noisy cricket still just a-chirping away in my one good ear from the slap I was giving…when then I happened upon little Pete first. I couldn’t help not to take my eye off’em as I just stared at him for the longest of times, held captive was I by his lifeless form. (As then a great swarm of memories had filled my mind as a thousand bees all buzzing around stinging me with each and every one) As then I recalled Mr. Mobley once told me about him, and these were the very words he spoke, ”Laddie Boy, I believe Pete is the eldest amongst us, for when I came here to die as an old man, all wore out was I, Pete was already here for God only knows how long he was.”
And as he pointed behind himself and revealed, ”I found him in the heart of the great oak, in the midst of the field just in a hollow beneath its roots. It took a long spell times two, in fact, but he eventually warmed up to me and we’ve been the best of allies ever since…he’s such a good fella soft and gentle he is.”
Oh yes, the thoughts a-kept a coming one after the other, as an endless procession of railcars it was, in this their only briefest of absence. When just then I felt a swearword beginning to caress the tip of my tongue against their killers, as I then recalled what Mr. Mobley had once taught me and said, ”Aye, I remember all once had foul mouths and cussed a whole bunch, and when they wasn’t going about that, breaking their oaths they were…as casually as dropping a hat. Always remember, Laddie Boy, fine words sharpen the mind as steel, therefore always carry a sharp blade with ya…you’ll never find no truer words ever spoken you will.”
Yes, his wise proverbs played just as sweetly as his music through the concert halls of my mind…indeed; there was none truer in all the world I cried. Then after what seemed like forever and a day, I eventually gathered up My Fair Lady Friend Dear along with sweet Pete, in my little, painted, red wagon, and slowly rolled them home…rolling home was I to bury them now. If only I thought…if I could have buried them in my heart, but, surely, no such thing could be, for a warm chest is never a place for a cold grave, as I very much often heard Mr. Mobley say. So, in my mind I determined the next best thing, a nice, little, sunny spot it was just beneath my windowsill, and so in my childlike doing I figured they would always be near. When then just as quickly I remembered…I remembered the object in my pocket, and upon retrieving it I found Mr. Mobley’s last carving. When suddenly it was as if a great wave of sadness came crashing over, dowsing me from my head to my feet all over again…worse than the first time it was. Surely, I thought I was going to drowned in all my teary waters…it was as if I was standing shoulders beside myself, with my still bloody lip all a-quiver as I gently held the carving in my hand, for, alas, it was My Fair Lady Friend Dear reunited with Annabelle, her very own dear mother was she, and with sweet Pete as an angle keeping watch over them. All I could do was just stood there thinking what all the centuries of war and pestilence could not do was done this day with the price of a coin. And it was then as if I was punched in my very stomach, buckling me over as I fell to my knees sobbing uncontrollably.
Truly, it was the longest day of my life since my mother and father’s passing. And so as time indomitably pressed on with all its painful reminders, in that dark coming of dread days, the powers that be tore down Mr. Mobley’s stone hedge, pulled up his roses, and had cut down all his trees, and up came the mine until there was nothing left but a gaping hole in the ground, in this our little side of Yorkshire Dale it was. I must say a flight of hungry locust couldn’t have ravaged it anymore then what was done to it. Yes, a scar was made upon the earth as well as on my own heart, and when they had finally bleed all the money from the land that could be had, they left just as quickly as they came, without even so much as saying a goodbye or to the devil with ya! Indeed, the end often times is never a too happy affair to be had, for this hard lesson was also to be proven to Mr. Randolph, for soon afterward rumor has it, that he learned his wife had been unfaithful to her vows, and he had just as quickly strangled the life out of her with his own two, bloody, murdering hands and had lost his mind in its foul doing.
And so now I am told he spends his time dawdling away, bound in a straightjacket all fitted-up by Big Momma Joe (a particularly, large, big boned woman was she, who was especially known for her cruelty and violence towards the inmates).
And too was muchly prized for her fighting…a real, bare knuckle brawler was she, who was also said to have eleven inch fists on the round, and had used them quite frequently…true, she had broken a bone or two in her day.) Yes, he was now safely tucked away within one of her over-tightened straightjackets, where he was left there to rot with his lying tongue removed from its dark root as to keep him from swallowing it whole. Screaming to himself yet again and again with what little speech he has left, ”God won’t be mocked…God won’t be mocked!!!”
As banging he, his jostled brains as penance against a lagged wall, all mind you to the sound of his keeper’s mirth, within this his darkened asylum all stained with misery…you shall find him there still. Which now too has become his garden of stone where nobody pays him no never mind much anymore, for no one now really cared. No, not even the rodents which keep forever vigil over him heeded not his complaints in the least; they bothered not with his screams, for as unto them it gave seasoning to his flesh. Indeed, It was just merely the beginnings of his atonement with now only the flyspecks upon the ceiling for his stars to count by night, he knew each and every one of them…now all by name, and thus had irony taken its revenge upon him, was this not to be his justly conclusion for all the lives he stole.
Yes…yes they were all gone now, and all that was left was for me to pick up the broken pieces of my shattered world. A world now which seemed more of a curse than a blessing it was. Gone…gone they all were…all but for the heart ache, what more could the world take from me I wondered!? For was it as a dark, sinking air chocking out all of the light in my life, as now too the long days had since slowly past into sunrise…sunset…sunrise…sunset, just as I once before heard told now so long ago. How I then thought time was the cruelest of enemies, for it takes no prisoners…no safe conduct is giving, only the gallows awaits. It just goes onward and forward never retreating in its most merciless march, as it leaves its lifeless victims heaped upon its wayside, as are too its wounded are tramped under foot. It just deathly plods away, on and on till all my world was tinged by the ugliest pallid…all but sickly grey, everything was grey…dark, grey, and dreary just as my spirits were.
That is…that is until one day I caught a glint of color in my one good eye, and yet again the memory stirred. As a brilliant flash it was held there against a cold, stark world, for I had just seen in one tiny, little corner, in one teensy, small spot in Mr. Mobley’s now barren field, a single Irish rose appeared. For, indeed, there must’ve remained a wee speck of root that had begun to grow again, in just this little handful of earth that no shovel ever before touched…in just this one small spot they’d missed. As then a quiet hush of stillness came over me as upon the wings of a dove, as I remembered all the happier times, and thus would I not dare to hope again.
But, nevertheless, true though, it was bitter-sweet as a lemon rind ground between my teeth, and such was the circumstance…I could not persuade myself for all my memories of yesterday. And so it was as the days slowly crept how very often I would consider them as the rose, that they should never end, but, alas, the hours could not withstand, for they could not always last forever and a day, as time ever so hastened through my frail grasp, as now it has begun to press down upon me the very same, under all its ponderous weight of years, in this too my old age.
With now all my weary bones feeling just a little, wee bit closer to home…home where all my friends and family await, where one day soon I shall hear them all say, “Where have you been, Laddie Boy, we’ve been waiting for such a long time?”…but even still it endures…the Irish rose remains.
The End
by Craig Waltman
USA
November 2019
It was nearing the close of the end of the first Great War. Its final chapters were being written in smoke, tears, fire, and blood, as the German’s zeppelins – this their infernal war machines – wrought their havoc upon the earth, nightly raining down their iron of terror upon a once merry ole London, from horizon to horizon, for miles all around…all a-fiery blaze she was.
And was soon to be my young world rendered as unto ashes, all but ashes, nothing but air castles of cloud and stormy blue, all stitched up together, it was, with a spider’s web waiting to be unwound…so very fragile it all was.
When first I was sent to my mother’s next of kin, her very own dearest brother was he, after all my family was nicked (stolen) from this earth in a single bombing raid, which left me deaf in my right ear, as a blinding shard pierced the circle of my eye, and so likewise pocked marked my body with all its shrapnel scars that a soul could possibly bare. To this very day, in my one good ear, I can still hear the dying screams of the maimed as London burned. I can still smell their smoke as in the very air around me at times.
Yet, even now it gives me the shivers just to think of it. It’s as if only it occurred this morning still. So, now being the last of the Culpepper’s was I, I started anew with my uncle, as far from London as I could get without hitting water I thought. Most sadly, he had lost his good arm in the battle of the Somme, and his poor wife and daughter had succumbed to the ill effects of influenza, in all the selfsame year mind ya. I can still remember at times he would just sit there with the morbs (melancholy) creeping all over him real bad like, and it was all that he could do to keep from bawling his grey eyes out for all his loss…as at times I would catch him staring across the room at me.
For sure I wasn’t much to look at anymore, I reckon, on account, of all of my scares and all. I can only figure it is because I once favored my own dear mother so much, in which he loved with all his heart and would often say, “Until my belly hurt.” Oh, how we missed her so! But really now I think he was crying for all of us, I could clearly tell by the hurt in his eyes and how he would often turn to hide them and say, “Don’t mind me, son, it’s just a speck of dust in my eye.”
But even still were there happier times to be had, for that’s when I first became familiar with Mr. Mobley in my wonderings, and so I can tell I’ve known him since I was wisps high to a wee sparrow’s wing as such the saying goes. We became real chuckaboos (close friends) in every word of the sense we did, none could be any closer as we once were. Why, I can remember he even painted my little, rusty wagon the loveliest shade of red, and would always fill it with all kinds of fruit from his garden with never a single suggestion from me. I never-ever asked him once; he just did it from the kindness of his own heart I can only guess.
Now still being no more than a lad was I, I figured I knew everything the world could fling at me. I can take an arrow or two, for I seen it all a hundred times and a score or two more before I surely had. Now I hadn’t to be told twice and thus my course was set…topsy-turvy as it may be and how I made it to manhood is beyond me, I’ve should have died countless times.
Oh yes, there were to be bumps on the road and plenty of near misses to be had that’s for sure…when I should have wrapped the bumper around the tree. Yes, but even so I can still recall Mr. Mobley, through the vast fog of years lived just down our little one horse lane, upon that dusty old road to nowhere, really no more than a pig trail it was, upon a couple acres was he, which was bounded by a trouser high, stone hedge (dry stone wall) all being wildly climbed about by an Irish rose it was. Strange though I thought how it lacked the convenience of a gate, and I, of course, fancied it to be an odd sort of thing…no gate that is, and if I might even be so bold to tell not even so much as a sheep’s creep could be spied…at least not by my good eye. There I would just see him sit as a frozen hero of some kind, as from another time, like some knight of old was he for the better…the most finer part of the day a-plucking away as a maestro would on his lovely fiddle with a silvery fox named Pete just quietly resting upon his lap, with all manner of birds swarming about his head, in the coolness of the day. Yes, he would just sit there whilst peddling the fruits of his land for nothing really much I must declare.
A penny here, a penny there and gladly gifting away he did all his leftovers to whomsoever needed it, now bringing he did I witnessed a much needed beauty to a war-torn world filled with all kinds of misery and strife. Always was he just under the golden leaf awning of his broad trees, which appeared all to be a thousand years old if not only a day more judging from this their most ancient appearance…their greatly size. Even now I can still see him as if this very instant always wearing that stubble, bristly, brimmed hat of his with his rosy muffler as shielding his face, so as all you could see were his bright eyes peering through, and oh how they sparkled, how they shined for they were most bright at that, indeed, they were.
It is true that no one ever clasped an eye upon his face as the old timers would say, “He’s always been here even when there wasn’t a trail to get back in here, then.”
And even some more would dare speak, “He been here even before this thing called dirt,“ I would hear them say with a laugh.
And finally the very oldest among them would tell,”Even down to that same tired, old hat and clothes he wears, surely they can’t be the same ones, for by now they would have worn out for sure.” And as they would continue to wag their heads and ask in wonder,” It just can’t be…it’s not possible is it…is it?”
And so the talk did go about like he was something of the sort of a gorgon, rendering them as if unto very stone with a single glimpse upon his naked face, they would always gossip amongst themselves. And so one day I inquired about his coverings as he told, “Laddie Boy,” for he always called me that, “It’s an old war wound I received in the service of our good king. Verily, his majesty’s enemies have giving yours truly a beauty mark to remember them by.”
Indeed. He had a most peculiar way of saying things he did. It was as if he was all but a hundred years out of step with time it seemed. And I, of course, being a child who knew everything, and had no need of instruction at all, believed without question. I took him at his every word and so it became as gospel in my young head not to be judge, or reproved for the most part, for I could tell the difference when he was trying to tell stories to entertain, or so I thought.
Besides, I knew him to be a good and generous man, for he used to carve me little, wooden animals of each and every kind. Every day he would have me a new one afresh, and why before long I could have filled a whole ark with them if I so desired, for so many they were. But even still strange though how I thought, he never ventured once beyond the protective confines of his stone hedge, for I, of course, being a helpful lad would fetch him whichever thing he needed most, which, indeed, was very scant, some sugar, perhaps some tea every now and again…a bit of cloth…some leather, but whatever it was it wasn’t very much I do recall. It was as if he hadn’t a need in the world, not a single care.
I can still close my eyes and see his old, dappled cat a-traveling atop the coping stones, its well-worn path ‘round and ‘round the green she went with her softly pitter-patter, always jumping into his ready arms when he called out to her, “My Fair Lady Friend Dear.” He would always say with the kindest voice, and too it was as if she answered his ever beck and call she did. In fact, no one could recount a time that he did not have her. She must’ve been very old, but in truth her years did not show, for she remained spry as a kitten with every leapful bound I couldn’t help but notice…so always very playful she was. So being an inquisitive lad, I asked him how old she was, just for my curiosity’s sake as he replied, “Oh dear Lord, she’s nearly as old as I.”
And then he went on to say,” I’ve always held cats in my keep. They are good for going about the business of taking care of rodents and such…if you get my meaning. And too they make for good company they do…who couldn’t ask for anything more.”
And then he went on to inform,” However, people have not always taking a shine to them, though. I can remember once upon a time, long ago there was a blight which swept through the land like a burning fever it was, and nearly all that it touched died in their tracks. As the walking dead they were, and all they had to do was fall down and they would never get back up again.”
Then he closed his eyes as if he was peering deep inside of his head and told like if he was in some other far off place and time, “The stench of death hung as a heavy cloud, a terrible lingering it was as the funeral fires burned day and night with open graves piled high, as too the rats perished in the very streets around us for the disease they carried. Oh, it was a perilous wonder which caused men’s hearts to fail them in fear.”
Then he said,” By the thousands… the thousands they slew the poor cats as if they were to blame, but, alas, it was no remedy for the pestilence only worsened through their misguided efforts.”
Then there came a pause held by a long sigh as he shrugged his shoulders and revealed ”For they even killed my own sweet, sweet, dear Annabelle, and spared not her wee kittens in the least, all for except My Fair Lady Friend Dear which I kept hide away in my pocket. Yes, they burnt me out for at the time they called it witchery for having them, which, of course, I knew nothing of the sort. And so being persuaded at the end of a pitchfork I left with nothing but what I held in my pockets. And so with my fiddle at my side I and came here to die, I did, and perhaps play a song or two in the wait.”
And then he clasped his hands together and he went on to say, “Laddie Boy, their perpetual lunacy was most maddening, it had befallen them all. So, I fled as far from their idiocy my old, wore out bones could carry me, and fell, I did, upon this very spot to meet my maker.”
Then he told, ”I once attended their parishes, a mile wide were they but only ankle deep as it turned. Wolves, wolves, all wolves they were pretending to be sheep without any Christian charity …that was a dirty, rotten thing to do but they did it anyway!”
I could plainly hear the soreness in his voice by his telling of it, when before I thought he hadn’t a care in the world, I was wrong, if anything he cared too much, he cared most of all. So, yet again time slowly marched on as the days dropped off one by one and I, of course, being a most persistent child would ask him about his family, if he had any pictures, an image for me to see, and him having none said, ”Oh, I dare not gaze upon them, for portraits are as tombstones, only painful reminders of once was and never again shall be. As ghosts upon canvas they are, phantoms on glass, only shadows they now will only ever be, at times I can’t bare the sadness to think.”
Then he told as if he was looking straight through me, “The world passes away as one generation stands upon the bones of the generation which came before. Oh, Laddie Boy, a ponderous mountain it now is, but I remain the same. All that I’ve known and loved has passed through the vail of this life and have gone from here. Their once familiar faces have all become strangers to me now, I believe I’ve lived much too long.”
Then he told, ”It seems, my child, the good Lord won’t take me and the Devil won’t have me. What is a poor man to do you wonder?”
And after a moment I thought and asked with what I’m sure must’ve been a bewildered look upon my face,” What are you saying, you can’t die?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” he explained, ”sometimes I a-hear Saint Peter a-calling me just upon the other shore. I sense he’s waiting there for me with my family still.”
Then he said as if though he was trying to cheer me a little, “Now chin up Laddie Boy, you can rest assure if I go before (when the shadow of the ax befalls me) I’ll be putting in a good word for ya, and I’ll tell your mother and father what a fine friend you’ve been to me and My Fair Lady Friend Dear and good ole sweet Pete, too.”
Then he said,” Aw, let’s think no more of this, let’s play another song and I’ll learn you the words.”
And so we spoke no more of it that day, it was as if we played and sang all of our worries away, oh we made such a time of it…it was such fun. But even still always behind the wall I saw him with his Fair Lady Friend Dear never once wondering out his green confines. Even during the heavy, white drifts of winter it always remained in leaves like some virtual Garden of Eden it was…with its bowers of branches with fruit upon each and every tree, with the Irish roses always in full bloom. It was as if time had turned a blind eye to it just like Mr. Mobley’s clothes. And I wondered how could such a thing ever be as one day he told, “Now I believe I will tell you, every stone I tore from the ground with my own two hands… every fruit tree I planted with the sweat of my brow and the land bore out the rest. The years pass as but days, sunrise…sunset…sunrise…sunset, until, alas, all I see is the day. The sun forever endures…darkness cannot dim my eyes.”
And then he said, “When I came here there wasn’t a soul, as I told you before I came here to die as old as I was, but death would not take me.”
Then he revealed as if I was the first he had ever confided in, ”You see this wall, it took me years to raise it without a tool, a spade broke not the earth once, and through the course of events I found every day I got a bit stronger. As the Irish rose I would not wither, and soon I found I had more than enough years to spare and then some.”
And then he went on to say, ”I have a book of stories in which to tell you, and they all tell the same tale, sunrise…sunset… sunrise… sunset…never again to be kissed by the cool of the night nor see its silvery moon winding upon sails of starlight unfurled.”
And that’s when I began to sense an air of sadness about him at times, as the world just outside his stone hedge passed him by, and being I not a dull boy asked, ”I’ll give you a penny for your thoughts,” as my mother would often say when she seen I was blue.
And thus was his reply, ”Aye, Laddie Boy, my memory has become as pages of parchment with its ink slowly fading away, I have all but forgotten now. All I know is sunrise…sunset…sunrise…sunset…a grim certainty is this truth.”
“What is this truth?” I asked and this is what he said, ”No, there’s nothing which abides under the sun anew, it’s all happened before as a whirly top a-turning round and round she goes again and again…the same book of stories…sunrise…sunset…sunrise… sunset…all is the conceit of vanity hidden behind a mask.” And then he thought deeply for a moment and said, ”All be it still the same pig with a different color of rouge, I would gladly trade all my yesterdays for tomorrow’s hope and what it may bring forth. One never knows, Laddie Boy, for tomorrow you may find your fortune.”
Every day we talked like this across his stone hedge, when one day I had finally gained enough courage and asked why he never left his garden, as now he told with eyes which looked away as if he didn’t want to say, ”For I fear I’ve been here too long. If I leave I shall surely die. Every day I cheat death for I have cheated it far too many times, and now it waits for me just beyond the stone hedge…it has a great ravenous hunger it does.”
And thus reasoning aloud I figured why he had no gate as I thoughtlessly blurted, ”What, you don’t want Death to sneak in and grab ya?”
And Mr. Mobley being quick he was taught me a lesson and said, ”Aye, Laddie Boy, be wise for death is never a thing afar off, it embraces as we speak, with every breath…just one thin blood vessel away are we from being taken at any moment. All you have to do is look over your shoulder and see the shadow of the ax is always upon us.”
And then he thought for a second and said, ”Aw, but you are wise aren’t ya? I’m so sorry, Laddie Boy, for you have seen its ugly face up close a time or two before haven’t we. You must forgive me for my memory isn’t what it used to be. I think I’ve remembered too much. It’s like my mind is all filled up and it has no place else to go but out of my fool mouth.”
But even still I could tell as a dark cloud of worry hanging over him, as I asked him why he hadn’t touched his fiddle all morning, being he made such lovely music with it all the time. And it was the first I had ever seen him angry, as he then raised his voice with a threat and rumbled, “Now cover your good ear, Laddie Boy, for sure the dung wagon is going to hit the grist mill if anyone ever tries to take me off my land, it’ll come to collie shangles ( a dog fight ) for certain I tell ya! I’ll break my fiddle over their head, for they won’t be plucking away on its strings when I’m dead and gone will they!”
For as now I could clearly see, in that which he held in his hand was a letter from some mining company, and as he quickly wadded it up in his clinched fist he confided with me as he tipped the wink and said, ”They be wanting my ores, Laddie Boy, well they want be getting any of it while I’m still kicking about topside of God’s green earth!”
But even still I could hear the concern in his voice, for at the time I hadn’t a clue he wasn’t paying any of his war taxes. A penny here, a penny there wasn’t cutting it…not by a mile and the company was therefore insinuating the land was fairly theirs, and that they would not be cutting him no square deal at all (a word, in fact, which could not be found in their phrasebook, a page torn out right along with sympathy it was) and, of course, he would be taking the whole shaft on this one for sure. For now they wanted his land something fierce like and no wasn’t any kind of answer they wanted him to be giving’em. Then going fourth with his rant he told, “The devil only gets craftier and what little we learn we soon forget, it gets wiped clean from the pages of our minds, nothing now but a mere smear mark it is lost between two worn covers!”
Then reaching down he grabbed a handful of dirt and shone, “You see this little scoop of earth is all that I know and now they’re going to take it from me. This land is as the taste of cool water to my soul, it sustains me and all which dwell here for what reasons I know not why… nothing here ever wears out. Indeed, it is of some master stroke of design it is…as by the hand of God himself.”
Then he went on with his complaint and said, “Born was I with the wrong last name with only poor man’s gold (copper) in my purse. It is truth, poverty is a rich man’s playground, for they take what all their eye desires, leaving nothing but the poor to starve. Now this earthly realm has new kings and lords over us. But, alas, they’re the same, old, portly lot always wanton with their bellies never filled, always wanting more, you know the kind who would be cutting their own throats with a fork…those kind of folks. The very kind that would be passing by way a cemetery and see nothing but buried treasure to be had.”
Then he said,” Laddie Boy, there’s only one Lord over the heaven and earth, the Lord Savior King. I’m done with the earthly kind for they be selling you the very rope they be swinging you with in the morning, all be it with a smile on their face and a thieving hand in your cold, dead pocket.”
Then he explained and said, “These bottomlands were never really worth much to nobody, I had it all to myself for a long time. And now every riffraff, Tom, Dick, and Harry find themselves here. Oh, a few people use to come and go every now and again, a family here, a family there and then they left this place to never return.”
And so I asked him where do they go, as then he looked straight at me with the most somber eyes as he pointed his finger towards the sky and told, ”Oh, Laddie Boy, they all die of something if old age doesn’t overtake them first.”
And being somewhat perplexed I asked,” When you said you fight for your king, it was king George (George V) wasn’t it?”
Oh, heavens to Betsy no my fine young fella,” he replied,” it was Henry the VI, and I’m still waiting reimbursement for my wages …their blatant about not paying people what’s their fair due don’t you know.”
Then as he wringed his hands together with the letter still caught betwixt them and said, ”I’ve been sojourning here for over four hundred years now and haven’t seen so much as a brass farthing to show for all my service…which goes without saying.” And then he joked, “But Georgy did feed us on a rather regular basis though, a chicken one day and its feathers the next.”
Then having a bit more amusement, he just always had a way of doing it like some kind of gift or something, making one feel better about themselves (for it was I, who was supposed to be trying to make him feel better, but as it turned it was the other way around ), but that was just him for ya, for he could always put a smile on my face as he then joked, ”You know, Laddie Boy, I heard tell Rome wasn’t built in a day but it sure enough burnt down in one…no reason…no rhyme. Yes, when all the world only sees a Shepherd boy, God may see a king, funny thing how the world is, one just never knows do they?”
Then as he was gazing off into the western sky he forewarned me and told, ”It appears as rain ya best be getting home now. I’ll see ya come morning my fine, young lad, if I don’t clasp an eye ya before. Be a good boy now and run along, I have to put all my butterflies (chickens) away for the coming night, and for sure I’ll have something special whittled for you on the next.”
And if I had known then what I know now…was this to be our very last day on earth together I would have never left him. For upon the following morning, as I came running up as usual, as all the other hundred times before with my little, painted, red wagon in tow behind me, just a-rattling away it was and kicking up the dust. When all of a sudden, just over the rise I seen some rather official looking men, two officers in uniform I could tell, and who was also accompanied by an angry, red-faced man, in a most fashionable, pinstriped suit, now leaping Mr. Mobley’s stone hedge. Brandishing they were some more papers as a weapon forged against him, whilst the one in the suit yelled in a threating voice, as he stamped his feet as a naughty child taken to a fit, ”It’s well half past time for you to go, whether you like it or not I’m taking possession of this property!”
And as he shooed him off with his flaying hands, as the mean-spirited would do to an old, mangy cur he further gloated,
”Do you see the ink on this paper, it gives me the privilege… now you’ve worn-out your welcome; you have five minutes to pack your belongings and get out, or we’ll have to start getting grabby with ya! (him saying this, of course, not knowing that all of Mr. Mobley’s worldly possessions he carried upon his person.)
And most harshly, when I had seen the five minutes was up, he’d really began to lay into him as he threatened, ”Do you hear, old man, or do we have to pound the wax out of your ears!? The watch tells me your time is up, and if you don’t leave this very instant we’ll be forced to put the beat down on ya, and it’ll be a good roughing up I guarantee… it won’t be nothing like your mother be giving ya!“
As then he whispered to the officer to the right of him and said, ”I want you to pluck this dodo bird real good, do you hear.”
And with but a nod of his chin the officer agreed. All mind you while all this was going on Mr. Mobley just contently played away on his lovely fiddle, pretending the whole time as not to hear a word was said (but I could clearly tell it was just all merely a front, for Mr. Mobley’s placid waters only appeared to run deep, for just beneath I beheld a swirling maelstrom was forming within his manners).
And now as I too had followed them over the hedge, and was pleading for them to leave him alone, but only would they deafen their ears towards my elegiac cries, as then the toffee-nosed (snobbish) man in the suit, with his ever present papers in hand, with all its miles of licit snippets and legal paragraphs, who I now only know as Mr. Fenton Randolph, the owner of the company, being he now in a tiff grabbed Mr. Mobley’s bow hand as reaching his wits end with him, and thus trying to illicit a response, in fact, succeeded in his crude endeavor, now making the old man (Mr. Mobley) rise to his feet as a raging storm was he, lashing out like lightning with his fiddle, now smashing it over Mr. Randolph head as he thundered, ”You want be having my fiddle once I dead and gone, I’d made sure of that!”
As then My Fair Lady Friend Dear leapt upon Mr. Randolph’s back clawing and biting the whole time. It was as if she was trying to burrow herself into his jacket, and likewise good ole Pete had clamped down on his pleated pant leg as a meaty bone to be chewed. When then quite sneakily Mr. Mobley brushed against me, now slipping something into my breast pocket as he then softly confided, ”This is yours, Laddie Boy, I wish it could’ve been more.”
As no more than the saying of this, one of the officers had begun his tussling about with him, trying hard was he to put his arm around his head, in order to lock it secure. As too the other had yanked off My Fair Lady Friend Dear, smacking her mightily against the stone hedge, whilst Mr. Randolph had loosed a heavy coping stone and landing it squarely upon poor, ole sweet Pete. And that’s when I seen all the ruffians about him, with all their fangled accoutrements and fine attire had attempted to pile onto Mr. Mobley, concluding I can only guess that the odds were in their favor, or so it seemed as he was wildly swinging and punching, fighting all the way down, cracking a jaw, busting a noise or two for sure. Now taking I seen all three men just to hold him down as he yelled, ”You bloody money grubbers, you killed My Fair Lady Friend Dear and my sweet Pete! You’ll spend an honest man’s dollar to save an ill-gotten dime would ya!?”
And too upon his breath a most frightful curse he pronounced as they were throwing him over his hedge, I remember his words still as he said, ”May all the evil you meant for me be done unto you…may their tortures never cease neither night nor day…being they forever perineal…always seeking yee rest and never finding it…not an hour…not a minutes peace to be had for ya!”
And when they had finally concluded with their throwing of’em, Mr. Randolph yelled with a red trickle just dripping down his forehead, ”You crazy, old coot, you knocked my gold tooth out! Now get up and get out of here whilst you still can, or we will break your fool legs at the knees I swear!”
And when they had followed him over, seeing that he would not move…not a twinge he made, not a wisp, they had just as quickly started to their kicking of him, as he laid there motionless on the ground as they questioned, ”Aw, are you playing dead with us now?”
“Well,” then said Mr. Randolph, “we’ll see what we can do about that…boot him all the harder, boys! It’s nothing like a little morning football to thaw the chill from your veins…let’s see if he likes the taste of heels, then!” When just as quickly one of the officers exclaimed as he recoiled in his shock, “No…no…no…no, Sir, he is dead…he’s dead as can be!”
And then he said as if he was asking for some kind of forgiveness or something, “We didn’t mean to kill ya, you old fool, but dead you are anyway.”
“Well then, “coldly replied Mr. Randolph,” one way or another he’s off my property. Now let’s take a gander at his face…be he man or beast…shall we take a peek?” And as they undone Mr. Mobley’s muffler, I couldn’t help but notice through my one, good, misty eye (it wasn’t anything at all I was expecting to see) that, in fact, Mr. Mobley did have one rather small, unremarkable scare upon his right cheek, clearly its faint thinness was nothing to moisten a stamp on a post about, so diminutively small it truly was. But the thing that was most striking about him was that he appeared to be as a young man in the Spring of his youth, in all the fullness of his prime, and how could such a thing ever be I puzzled…how and why…was it the land he said as I struggled to remember…was to be all his stories true?
But before I could pin it down with a nary a finger, as now making such a mad dash of things to conceal their crimes, the men quickly loaded away Mr. Mobley in the back of their lorry, as thrice I cried out to them.
“What are you doing…where are you taking him!?”
When finally having enough of it Mr. Fenton Randolph replied as he gave me a ringing slap to my good, left ear, ”He’s going to Potter’s Field, boy, now you best get back before I’ll give you a real rap-tap-tap and a knock.”
As he then shoved my face aside with his open hand, now splitting my lip with one of his two rings. And while yet still tasting the blood in my mouth I called out to him and said, ”You’re a dirty, rotten, murdering man!”
And then I said for reasons I know not why, it was as if from out of the mouths of babes I cried, ”Hear me, one day you shall pay for this! God won’t be mocked forever…what goes around comes around and you’ll be getting yours in spades!”
And as he slammed the door to the cab he finally told, “Whatever turns your crankshaft, boy! It takes all kinds to make the world go round. Now you had better grow up some more before I’ll give you a real good lesson, do ya hear, or do you want some more of what I gave you before!?”
And then as he hammered the door with his balled up fist, they peeled away in a great petrol cloud of oily smoke a-squealing and a-knocking all the way. And as I seen the lorry which carried Mr. Mobley turning the last corner, now out of sight was he…was I to be left there standing all alone with only my thoughts, feeling I hadn’t much of a friend left in the world anymore, with a noisy cricket still just a-chirping away in my one good ear from the slap I was giving…when then I happened upon little Pete first. I couldn’t help not to take my eye off’em as I just stared at him for the longest of times, held captive was I by his lifeless form. (As then a great swarm of memories had filled my mind as a thousand bees all buzzing around stinging me with each and every one) As then I recalled Mr. Mobley once told me about him, and these were the very words he spoke, ”Laddie Boy, I believe Pete is the eldest amongst us, for when I came here to die as an old man, all wore out was I, Pete was already here for God only knows how long he was.”
And as he pointed behind himself and revealed, ”I found him in the heart of the great oak, in the midst of the field just in a hollow beneath its roots. It took a long spell times two, in fact, but he eventually warmed up to me and we’ve been the best of allies ever since…he’s such a good fella soft and gentle he is.”
Oh yes, the thoughts a-kept a coming one after the other, as an endless procession of railcars it was, in this their only briefest of absence. When just then I felt a swearword beginning to caress the tip of my tongue against their killers, as I then recalled what Mr. Mobley had once taught me and said, ”Aye, I remember all once had foul mouths and cussed a whole bunch, and when they wasn’t going about that, breaking their oaths they were…as casually as dropping a hat. Always remember, Laddie Boy, fine words sharpen the mind as steel, therefore always carry a sharp blade with ya…you’ll never find no truer words ever spoken you will.”
Yes, his wise proverbs played just as sweetly as his music through the concert halls of my mind…indeed; there was none truer in all the world I cried. Then after what seemed like forever and a day, I eventually gathered up My Fair Lady Friend Dear along with sweet Pete, in my little, painted, red wagon, and slowly rolled them home…rolling home was I to bury them now. If only I thought…if I could have buried them in my heart, but, surely, no such thing could be, for a warm chest is never a place for a cold grave, as I very much often heard Mr. Mobley say. So, in my mind I determined the next best thing, a nice, little, sunny spot it was just beneath my windowsill, and so in my childlike doing I figured they would always be near. When then just as quickly I remembered…I remembered the object in my pocket, and upon retrieving it I found Mr. Mobley’s last carving. When suddenly it was as if a great wave of sadness came crashing over, dowsing me from my head to my feet all over again…worse than the first time it was. Surely, I thought I was going to drowned in all my teary waters…it was as if I was standing shoulders beside myself, with my still bloody lip all a-quiver as I gently held the carving in my hand, for, alas, it was My Fair Lady Friend Dear reunited with Annabelle, her very own dear mother was she, and with sweet Pete as an angle keeping watch over them. All I could do was just stood there thinking what all the centuries of war and pestilence could not do was done this day with the price of a coin. And it was then as if I was punched in my very stomach, buckling me over as I fell to my knees sobbing uncontrollably.
Truly, it was the longest day of my life since my mother and father’s passing. And so as time indomitably pressed on with all its painful reminders, in that dark coming of dread days, the powers that be tore down Mr. Mobley’s stone hedge, pulled up his roses, and had cut down all his trees, and up came the mine until there was nothing left but a gaping hole in the ground, in this our little side of Yorkshire Dale it was. I must say a flight of hungry locust couldn’t have ravaged it anymore then what was done to it. Yes, a scar was made upon the earth as well as on my own heart, and when they had finally bleed all the money from the land that could be had, they left just as quickly as they came, without even so much as saying a goodbye or to the devil with ya! Indeed, the end often times is never a too happy affair to be had, for this hard lesson was also to be proven to Mr. Randolph, for soon afterward rumor has it, that he learned his wife had been unfaithful to her vows, and he had just as quickly strangled the life out of her with his own two, bloody, murdering hands and had lost his mind in its foul doing.
And so now I am told he spends his time dawdling away, bound in a straightjacket all fitted-up by Big Momma Joe (a particularly, large, big boned woman was she, who was especially known for her cruelty and violence towards the inmates).
And too was muchly prized for her fighting…a real, bare knuckle brawler was she, who was also said to have eleven inch fists on the round, and had used them quite frequently…true, she had broken a bone or two in her day.) Yes, he was now safely tucked away within one of her over-tightened straightjackets, where he was left there to rot with his lying tongue removed from its dark root as to keep him from swallowing it whole. Screaming to himself yet again and again with what little speech he has left, ”God won’t be mocked…God won’t be mocked!!!”
As banging he, his jostled brains as penance against a lagged wall, all mind you to the sound of his keeper’s mirth, within this his darkened asylum all stained with misery…you shall find him there still. Which now too has become his garden of stone where nobody pays him no never mind much anymore, for no one now really cared. No, not even the rodents which keep forever vigil over him heeded not his complaints in the least; they bothered not with his screams, for as unto them it gave seasoning to his flesh. Indeed, It was just merely the beginnings of his atonement with now only the flyspecks upon the ceiling for his stars to count by night, he knew each and every one of them…now all by name, and thus had irony taken its revenge upon him, was this not to be his justly conclusion for all the lives he stole.
Yes…yes they were all gone now, and all that was left was for me to pick up the broken pieces of my shattered world. A world now which seemed more of a curse than a blessing it was. Gone…gone they all were…all but for the heart ache, what more could the world take from me I wondered!? For was it as a dark, sinking air chocking out all of the light in my life, as now too the long days had since slowly past into sunrise…sunset…sunrise…sunset, just as I once before heard told now so long ago. How I then thought time was the cruelest of enemies, for it takes no prisoners…no safe conduct is giving, only the gallows awaits. It just goes onward and forward never retreating in its most merciless march, as it leaves its lifeless victims heaped upon its wayside, as are too its wounded are tramped under foot. It just deathly plods away, on and on till all my world was tinged by the ugliest pallid…all but sickly grey, everything was grey…dark, grey, and dreary just as my spirits were.
That is…that is until one day I caught a glint of color in my one good eye, and yet again the memory stirred. As a brilliant flash it was held there against a cold, stark world, for I had just seen in one tiny, little corner, in one teensy, small spot in Mr. Mobley’s now barren field, a single Irish rose appeared. For, indeed, there must’ve remained a wee speck of root that had begun to grow again, in just this little handful of earth that no shovel ever before touched…in just this one small spot they’d missed. As then a quiet hush of stillness came over me as upon the wings of a dove, as I remembered all the happier times, and thus would I not dare to hope again.
But, nevertheless, true though, it was bitter-sweet as a lemon rind ground between my teeth, and such was the circumstance…I could not persuade myself for all my memories of yesterday. And so it was as the days slowly crept how very often I would consider them as the rose, that they should never end, but, alas, the hours could not withstand, for they could not always last forever and a day, as time ever so hastened through my frail grasp, as now it has begun to press down upon me the very same, under all its ponderous weight of years, in this too my old age.
With now all my weary bones feeling just a little, wee bit closer to home…home where all my friends and family await, where one day soon I shall hear them all say, “Where have you been, Laddie Boy, we’ve been waiting for such a long time?”…but even still it endures…the Irish rose remains.
The End