Originally published March 16, 2020...
The main character (MC) is now in the thick of it: The Second City, complete with what one might expect in and around a large-city harbor and its docks. Having been on the water for many months, the MC’s adventures are beginning to show on face and body. This segment has two main settings: First in a tavern, and then in an alleyway. In the latter, the MC meets another woman, but unlike the abusive, river woman, this one appears to have good intention. As you read, consider two things:
1) How do the experiences in this segment fit with what has gone before, and
2) What impacts do the experiences have for the MC’s future?
The nervous girl serves the food with a fork
on a chipped white plate. The meat smells like prey
long dead – a slab of flesh from a butchered cow
not hunted or caught running but raised tame
cut down inside a wicked, narrow fence
I recall brilliant rainbow-scaled bodies
flopping in the bottom of my red boat
If a creature is fated to be eaten
final honor should be granted to it
to look into the hunter’s eyes and see thanks
and mourning before death comes to close eyes
All this rises unbidden instantly
I stare at the meat and something once green
“Is something wrong?” the girl asks nervously
“I’ll let you know.” I say not looking up
“Please pay me now,” she asks quietly
“Of course.” while handing her the right amount
My appetite burns and I start to feed
on soggy vegetables and then the meat
Two bites let me know how long ago
the poor beast’s slaughter hurried it to death
I leave the rest, push back from the table,
stand and glare at the man behind the bar
He stares back through narrowed lids—one corner
of his mouth twitches sarcastically
“Is this your way of getting rid of strangers?”
I challenge him demanding an answer
“Everyone who comes in here’s a stranger.”
He jerks his head disdainfully toward me
“Think what you want. It’s not my business.”
He turns pretending to clean the bar top.
I’m tempted to pick a scrap but decide
this is a small-time cat fight in a place
of far more perilous predators
Grabbing my pack, I stare angrily
Argose unleashed looks over his shoulder
as if to say, what are you waiting for?
I walk out to the street in air as stale
as the tavern’s atmosphere, and I search
for fresher air and open space – suddenly
I begin to feel feeble and nauseous
With unexpected violence my stomach
erupts and I have only enough time
to reach the gutter before I wretch out
a gray and yellow stream - a putrid flow
pitiful amid the clicks of scuttling feet.
Argose leaps and is at my side licking
and pawing at my arm
Rain drips off building eaves and runs trickling
into gutters washing away my filth
I’m dizzy and slack-legged and can’t go on
I tie Argose’s leash to my rope belt
trudge off and find a long alley to rest
Halfway I must slide down leaning and sick
again, trying to stay out of the rainstorm
under a door lintel, I don’t care whose
Argose curls up next to the wet threshold
My head spins: I can barely sit upright
In a few minutes, I vomit again
this time, no gutter rush washes away
The mess spreads with the rain pooling ugly
Despite this, I nod off to raindrop-rhythm
Argose wet but warm and near – soft breathing
Sometime later, Argose stands and growls low
at scraping behind the door, sliding bolt
The door opens and knocks me off my perch
“Woa – hoa! Who’s this sitting outside my door?”
I reel and fall, my hand splats in my mess
Argose leaping is at my side licking
my face and pawing my arm
I stand wobbling, grabbing the upper arms
of a woman dressed all ‘a black: a dress
swings ‘round her ankles and loose head scarf frames
her furrowed face, wisps of gray hair escape
curling lazily down her forehead
and her black face – her chin and neck reveal
sloping blotches of dark spots everywhere
a hundred wrinkled lines interweaving
across her forehead, cheeks, and drooping lids
so low I wonder how she can see from under them
She reaches round and grabs my elbows
“There now. I’ve got you. You won’t fall so long
as you relax and don’t fight me
Turn slowly now and step down off this landing.”
She slips one hand down to my wrist
and the other on my shoulder – the hand
on my wrist looks like its veins are about to burst
all roped and knotty, yet skin loose as silk
I still hold her arms for fear I will fall
off the stoop and a second time in my vomit
She lifts my soiled hand that grasps her right arm
and with two fingers she dangles my sleeve
then drops my arm like the soiled thing it is
“That’s no way to greet a lady,” she smirks
“Sorry,” is all I can think to say now
I know what a wretch I am and how I smell”
She stands, hands on hips, smile deepens until
full glory of each inch of skin peaking
out from her widow’s weeds
I turn, step down, as Argose turns playful
prancing, weaving and turning in circles
The dark woman teeters down the three steps
faces me with piercing glare but smiling
I realize I’m staring – my face flushes
Argose pushes his nose into my leg
All this happens flashing, and then she speaks.
“You look like you’ve eaten a mangy cat
all pale and shaking with spittle drooling
“Yes, but not a cat; rather, soured food
in a tavern over there,” I point out
“You can’t be too careful in this district.
They’ll sell you slop, take your money – Farewell!”
“Yes, that’s it exactly. Like I was some
criminal vagabond come to rob them.”
“I can see their view. You look quite scruffy.”
“I’ve been on the river for some months now
and haven’t had much chance to groom myself
except with river water and comb twigs”
“Yes, you smell like that is all you have done
Say, I can’t stand here now talking with you
Someone I knew died and there’s a funeral
down by the river – he wants his boat burned
with him aboard, then after drowned in water”
“I’ve never heard of that way of going
Seems like a sad waste of a good boat”
“Well, he’s from the north where people are strange
Apparently, his people sail widely
but I really have to go now or . . . say,
why don’t you come with me to the burning?
unless you have something better to do
there will be food after the boat goes down.”
Background
Once again, I draw on my experience of city after city in the decades I travelled for my work. Never knowing what the next meal would be: awful or magnificent. I never had it so bad when it came to sleeping accommodations; I always had a bed and a shower. Still, I often felt like an innocent waif at the mercy of the people and conditions of the concentration of heavy-breathed entities and gray buildings. I couldn’t wait to get back home – to another city.
Exploration 1: As the MC enters the City and the tavern, the following thought arises. Do you have any opinion or feeling about it? Do you find the statement congruent with events up to this time?
“If a creature is fated to be eaten
final honor should be granted to it
to look into the hunter’s eyes and see thanks
and mourning before death comes”
Exploration 2: Compare and contrast the bar experience with the next scene wherein the MC meets the woman in black. How are they similar and how different?
Exploration 3: This seems like a good time to fill in Argose’s origin. Google his name. Compare/contrast what you find with the canine of this narrative.
Exploration 4: What do you make of the woman in black? Do you have any inklings as to how she will add or subtract from the narrative?
1 The hunter should feel guilt even if the hunter needs meat to survive.
ReplyDelete2 The woman in black is confident and offers companionship and food. The people in the tavern are inhospitable and sell bad food.
3 Argos was Ulysses' dog. After waiting 20 years, he dies when Ulysses returns home. Argose accompanies the MC.
4 She is a good witch.