He saw the three figures through the mists. Pleon, Heteria, Gennedario. He said their names to himself. There was no one else. The three went around a boulder and disappeared around it.

The man scrambled forward silently and skirting around he looked around to the other side.

To his surprise. There was no one there. Something seemed to groan beneath his feet. As if life itself heaved to breathe through the ground. Then all was silent.

He looked around helplessly. He had lost them in the open somehow.

He went back to their footprints in the dust. The dust around the rock was a peculiar white gray. He dug around. There were large pieces below. His fingers seized around something firm.

He drew out a whole dried bone. He did not react. But he knew it was a leg bone. A human leg bone. This did not bother him.

He sat puzzled in the quiet morning hours. Then he traced the footprints again in the dust. Easy to see from the brown dust of the mountain printed neatly in the gray. All three trails ended walking directly into the great rock.

The very last was a heel print. As if the rest of the foot had stepped into the rock itself.


From Heaven They Fell

Chapter 1. That Ruffian Malcolm.

Malcom Delrio was what they called him. His friends called him Mal. And being a man, a lad really, who was a prudent and good fellow. His father loved him, teaching him all the ways and life of labor. His mother smiled upon him: approving of his every gesture as a victor’s triumph. Their neighbors hailed him in the street for no other reason than the joy his simple love lit something new in their own hearts. When the old men sang he would lustily sing along. The aged eyes would light in memory, a fire of hope in the past. When a man needed help he would lend his back and wit until the burden was bearable. With his friends, for he had many, but with those he held dear he would go out and do daring as all young men do.

In the evening he would sit at the gambling tables with his father and his father’s friends drinking, telling stories through thick tales of tobacco smoke. Laughing at the old jokes and each turn of phrase that drinking would create a new mistake to be merry about. And yet bowing their heads in the silent defeat of hard times. But always heading home, head held high, not alone because their spirit, though sodden in beer, was full of the not-alone. And with a full spirit they went tottering home to their wives or mothers like orphans to their foster home.

They would stop at any neighboring hallowing to talk a moment and the women and girls would kiss the young lad. This was the way of things. A small local custom. Not different from many customs from around this world. And if there are other worlds, no doubt, the dangerous element of a body will touch the sensitive part of another in peace without drawing blood. And this is a show of vulnerability of both participants. To show that advantage could be taken, but from here no harm shall come. For is is not with our teeth that we rend our food? Only lightly masked by lips with which we direct our affections.

But where from does custom come?

Custom is a shortcut to clarity. If by calamity, the calamity is celebrated by the survival method. No need to survive again; but to revel in survival is the sharing in a golden gratitude for having passed through it.

But for this method of customary kiss? Because, I imagine, we all must survive love. But when life is slow and affection merely a custom: what then is Love?

The old grow old by knowing that a longing youth will often mistake affection and its caresses. By misidentifying the signs a youth can build the foundation of their life upon a mirage. Marriage can either be the ends or the means of affectionate life; both are vapors unable to hold love. And if it cannot hold love there can be nothing built here that will last or give any satisfaction. But if a touch is a vapor; reasoning is a cold ghost. To save the young the heartache we need to show their contrivance is hollow before a foundation of life collapses. Like a bank built upon self-thievery or helpless dependency; the old now invest to divert the calamity they themselves encountered. They see the hope in the eyes of every fool born and feel foolish for trying to expound an understanding that they themselves continue to ponder: can this fulfill me? But only one thing can. But that is easily spoken but not easily understood; and I dare not say it until it becomes clear. Only that food can be poison; poison can be medicine; and affection is just such a device of nature.

So mothers would press him tightly to their bosoms and their daughters would kiss his lips. In each the boy would feel the duty to the custom. Either in the hesitation of proximity, the awkwardness of shyness, but sometimes there was a surge of pride, happiness and pleasure; a hot unexplained eagerness or a receding sweating anxiety. It was in these moments he dowsed the meaning of each.

This was how they raised their sons; so doused in affection that no child would know otherwise and no grown man so easily err in his missing the mark of love to the woman he takes to wife. But even in communal effort were the burned remains of couples shackled in public but broken and shattered at the soul.

His father told many stories under the star lit skies as they walked the trail home. Of other lands and other people. People who had treated him poorly. It had a ring of legend. But no other soul in Keythos had these stories. For the rest of them had always lived there.

“This is my resting place,” he would say, “these are my people. Who took me in.”

The people of Keythos were largely farmers. They worked together, they married their sons to their daughters and strangers were held at a suspicious and chaste distance.

“I was chased here by my own brothers, who were going to hang me from a tree for the buzzards to pick clean.” his father had said.

“Why would your brothers want to do that?” Malcolm would ask incredulous at the idea that his father could ever be hated by anyone for any reason.

“I hurt someone once.”

“Why?”

“Well,” his father would take a big breath but then only say: “Sometimes, you don’t mean to; but you can’t make it right afterward.”

This answer left much hanging in the untold story. But these stories often go untold despite the hanging possibility that they will one day be told. Malcolm waited for this day to come; for this is when he knew his father would see him as a man and trust him with his deepest pains as much as his greatest triumphs. We are so ready as men to share in our victories; but so abashed to open for consideration our failure and shame. But if we do not raise up our mortality in the embrace of our children; how would they ever know these lessons anymore than a kiss would mean servitude instead of love? Perhaps it is only because we ourselves have never found our own way beyond it.

It happened one day the lad walked to town alone. It was hot and the sun shone bright and even the limestone seemed to radiate a bright yellow. The sound of his steps in the still of the desert amused him. It was afternoon. The hottest part of the day. All his work had been completed and so he stepped away, with his mother’s blessing, to meet his friend.

When you are walking alone time seems to pass at a different pace. It slows down if you are trying to get somewhere. And somehow if you are not minding the time, time slows you down. Malcolm was somewhere in between. The heat made it very uncomfortable to travel any faster. So a calm mind was a great benefit.

Up ahead was an outcropping of rock around which the road hid itself behind. Beyond it was a crossroads. Malcolm liked to think that was where he would meet a thief or a bandit and find a real adventure. But nothing ever met him there that wasn’t the same desert. But as always he hoped today would be different.

Today something different did happen. Something that had never happened to him before.

A voice called to him from the shade of a cactus patch that spread itself over the rock for which the road did bend. A tan face peered out, catching the yellow beam of the sun on its way to the ground, its teeth gleamed in smile. Mal’s feet turned up the rock following the voice of the girl until her bare feet stood upon the toes of his boots as she lifted her wet mouth to his lips and pressed her small breasts against his chest. It was tradition that they embrace and kiss but not tradition that they hold each other tighter after and kiss again. And longer. And then stare into the other’s awe filled eyes.

It was the wind that woke them to the lost smiles on their faces. The concerns that had brought them together by chance came back to their mind.

“What brought you to me today?” said the girl, not caring what the answer was. For she only wanted his embrace.

The lad smiled, “I was walking to meet Avery down the gulch.”

“What you stirring up?” the girl’s eyes shewed the shine that all things the lad would claim would be blameless.

“Batch o’ trouble.” Mal figured reasonably with a cocky grin in a way that was daring her to stop him.

Now neither of these young people had ever been had in this manner. Neither one knew what to do next. But neither wanted it to end. but Malcolm could still feel his obligation to meet his friend. And she had a fleeting recollection that she was supposed to be minding something else altogether but felt utterly exposed of heart in that moment and a desperation came over her that she had been mistaken and that he would leave and never meet her again.

The danger of losing him awoke the desire to use him while he was there. So she came gently close to him to feel the pull. Like a wind of its own creation the pull of the frame of his body through the fabric of her dress; lightly enough for a breeze to shake through, but not enough to break the draw of two trees falling against each other. She trembled for him, looked in his eyes and found that same look of trance that she felt, and trembling again they kissed softer and longer. The wind coursing through their storming insides grounding at the slightest nuanced touch of their lover.

“Come see me again?” she called as he broke away smiling but excusing himself. He glanced toward her to see what it meant to walk away for, as boys are slower of mind in such things. When he did so she deftly, almost unintentionally, let her shoulder strap fall to expose her round and tanned breast for him to see.

O the ripe fruit of womankind! What is a breast to man that God made it such a shape and form of love? As a babe we met our mothers, the first creature to bid us hello. The only constant, in a world of terrible and terrifying unknowns, was the round warm and soft skin near her constant beating heart we taste the sugar of her sweat. Only here did we feel a place apart from the world of expiring inconstants. The only hope of a love that does not give up; that truth and beauty unite in the symbol of yearning the heart by the budding full breast of plenty.
Where we are fed.
Where we are touched.
Where we are cared for.
All in hope of being loved.
Only to slowly wake to the desert of living. Learning that love declines and we, from birth, are coerced, willing or not, to learn instead to give it.

But how do we give what we don’t have? For there is no part of us that did not come from someone or someplace other. So we are not the material that made us. We are the inhabitants of a material we do not choose. Having forgot where we came and for what reason. Only that the breast reminds us of something good and safe. We age, and nature and propriety unite to see that we are made to give it up; To find we only look for another such source.

For men we look to the next breast-like thing or person that treats us comfortably or pleasurably. For it rests in a sagging breast of loving works but it also rests in a youthful untouched blossom. For some we look for a cushion of truth to feed us. For some we sit in a place of self-made stability; bottle in one hand and inhaling smoke from the other. All to find that taste of promise of growth shooting to new heights. We think:

“Is there anyway to escape death?”

“Is there anyway to stay young?”

“How can the aged and old know and act youthfully? For sedentary living and wisdom look to be a complete bore next to excitement and adventure.”

“If the truth never dies how can the truth touch us?”

“If the touch of love lives merely moments? How is love then constant?”

“Is life a dichotomy of Love and Death?”

The mysteries sing their own siren’s song that brings us a question: “How can anything last forever? And if someone figured out how to live forever would they ever tell?”

But whatever dull living or scrape with adventure occurs the questions never leave anyone well enough alone. So we desire the answer, but we also desire to deserve the answer.

Can we not simply desire to accept the accepted truth? We do. But it sits just as far away from believers and non-believers alike. It only rests in those who have tangled with it. The rest of us wonder how. But it comes like a storm and what remains of that survival is the flotsam we cling to.

But in contemplating eternity we make up a breast-story. Something that calls us. Satisfies us. And makes everything alright though all we see is temporary and passing.

Our heart calls:
“Inebriate me, my love; enfold me, embrace me. Delightfully. Youthfully in your work, for me, enblossom me with your good.”
But we don’t know who it is calling to. And soon we forget the comfort of the breast, and apply it, in symbol, to every fleeting relief.

For a woman she grows an understanding that she is good. Sometimes just for the good of her symbols; sometimes in honor of her symbols. Sometimes in bitterness of knowing they are unwanted beyond their comforting symbolism. In any case she knows she either has desirable good; or is the desired person whose symbols soulfully compliment her. But in her mind this is an aside to the reality of her personhood, only a constant reminder that they exist attached to her and so it seems natural to put them to some constructive use. Even if it might be construed as selfish.

The giving of good is the will and heart of the person. Simply having good is not enough. For either man or woman. They both need the movement of good. She for the feeling of herself as good; and for all to contort in response a writhing clamor of the joy of her self-discovery. That wakes a new dream in a newer soul.

But let us nevermind, for the moment, of all the paths of falsehood that divert us from what is true. But do we dare think that if the truth is eternal; is falsehood death itself?

The bell of a cow moving toward the field clanged the alarm of her work and the girl shrugged the strap back on and sprang off.

“I’ll be back around sundown.” Malcolm blurted after her.

“Where?” she called.

“At The Goose.” he called after her as the wind seemed to have blown away his skin idol. He strode forward; strong and merry at heart without a trouble upon his soul or weariness upon his shoulders.