Bedtime Story By Kerensa Hayden Let me introduce myself. My name is David Black. You may be thinking, why the introduction? It is because of what I believe. I think a person should always introduce themselves before they consider sharing anything of a personal nature. And I have something very personal to share with you. A story. The story. Of my life and how I came to be doomed. You can’t get much more personal than that, now can you? It was not all the wizard’s fault. I have to say that at the beginning, because otherwise you might believe I was merely duped into being trapped in the circumstance I am in. No, in the beginning I went to him of my own free will. It was only later that he used his magic to compel me. But I’m getting ahead of the story, am I not? The tale is long and winding, so if you’re needing a coffee, maybe a cup of tea, please, help yourself. I can wait. I have waited this long, haven’t I? Comfy now? Good. Settle in, why don’t you, and I’ll tell you everything. It began on a farm, or rather, I began on a farm, far away from everything. Rolling hills, green with growth in the spring, tawny with ripe wheat in the fall. That was my play yard. The scents of budding corn, a horse being brushed down, the milking barn at five in the morning. All these were notes in the music of my childhood. Yet I was lonely, terribly so. This was in a time before schooling was mandatory, when getting the crop in from the fields took precedence over learning at the one-room red house in town. I did go, enough to learn to read and write, but no one saw the need for me to attend beyond that point, least of all me. There were my parents, of course. And we did sometimes have conversations about life, the weather, who the next unfortunate man to be roped into being president would be. But they were not great philosophers, Ma and Pa, and I had no siblings to whittle away the cold winter hours with. So when Wallace appeared on our door step one early spring morning, looking for work, it was as if my unspoken prayers had been somehow heard and answered. “I’d not cause any trouble,” he told Pa meekly, eyes modestly cast down at the stoop he was standing on. “Just an honest wage for an honest day’s labor. And you can tell me to move on when you wish. I’ll not stay beyond when I’m wanted.” Pa stood looking at Wallace. He took in his bright red hair, weathered freckled face. He noted his scant belongings tied up in a cloth, which was attached to a loop on his faded coveralls. He saw the man’s dusty, worn work boots. Mostly he saw the patient way Wallace just stood there and waited. Now Pa was not a great thinker, but he was a very practical man. It did not take a genius to know the four large, hundred pound sacks of seeding corn out in the barn were not going to plant themselves. Nor that an extra pair of hands this spring might get an extra pair of hands worth of work done around the farm after the planting was done. “Let me see your hands,” Pa said, and Wallace dutifully held them out. “Rough, calloused,” Pa mused. “Yer face looks soft, but yer hands have seen work, sure enough. And you look not much past the age of thirty-five or so. I expect you might could hold your own.” He rubbed at his stubbled jaw and eyed the man on his porch. Wallace gazed back steadily, letting Pa get his full measure of looking without complaint. Finally, Pa nodded. “I reckon you’ll do,” he said. “Assuming you don’t do anything stupid, you can stay until the spring planting’s done.” Wallace did not smile, but nodded solemnly. Then he said the words that really mattered, the ones that sealed the deal as far as Pa was concerned. “I noticed your pig crib had some loose slats,” Wallace said casually. “I’m a pretty fair hand with carpentry. Maybe you’d let me take a swing at fixing it this morning?” Pa, who could swing a hammer about as well as he could spit into the wind without getting wet nodded. “That would be a good place to start,” he allowed, and stepped out onto the porch with Wallace. “Come on out to the barn. I’ll show you where the tools are, and we can discuss your pay.” Wallace slept in the barn after that, in the hayloft above the animals, having politely turned down a cot in the larder next to the kitchen when it was offered to him by Ma. He said sleeping way up high in the loft always made him feel safe, with the animals below the best alarm he could ever want. I wondered at the time why he’d need to feel safe when there was nothing but us for miles around. But there is much a boy wonders about at the age I was then, and soon enough something else caught my attention. Where Wallace slept became just another fact that everyone took for granted, like the rise of the sun or the gravity that held us to the good earth. That was the start of it. The first few pebbles on the road which led to where I am now. It does not seem like much, does it? Nor did it to me, then. Wallace was true to his word. He could and did fix the crib, as well as the loose barn boards, the wobbly back porch steps, and the stretch of fence line near the border of our farm that had been decidedly unstable since a drunk driver had taken out two posts with his car several years back. He also attacked the spring planting with so much enthusiasm, that even Pa had a hard time keeping up with his pace. I heard them talking one time, toward the end of the season. Pa was practical, but curious, and just could not help but ask what Wallace’s motivation was. “Time is short,” Wallace answered simply. “I’ve got to get done what I will in the time I’ve got left.” Pa looked at him for a good minute after he said that, just kind of soaked it in. Then he did something I had never seen my father do with a hired hand before -- he clapped Wallace on the back and laughed out loud. “You bet your life on it!” Pa cried fervently, clapping him on the back again. “Indeed I do,” Wallace agreed, and that made Pa laugh all the more. And when the spring planting was done two weeks later, neither Ma nor I were the least bit surprised when Pa asked Wallace to stay on as a permanent hand. All Ma said was, “First ever.” To which Pa replied, “Last one we’ll need too, the way he works!” And it was set in stone, just like that. As hard a worker as Wallace was, you’d think he would not have time to be bothered with me. After all, the nonsense a growing boy carries around with him is naught but dead weight to a working man. How to make a fishing lure, where to look for arrowheads, the art of spitting water between my two front teeth. All the things that were important to me. I told him about all that and more that summer as we worked side by side tending the animals and fields. The stories should have irritated him, just as they did my Pa. They should have, but somehow they did not. He seemed to revel in my stories, and once he told me they even made him nostalgic for his own spent boyhood. By summer’s end, I thought of him as more of an older friend, maybe even a second Pa, rather than just a farmhand. So when I told him one day how I had always wanted a tree house, and he laughed at me, I laughed with him, comfortable in the way old friends can sometimes be. “Markey-lad,” he said (it was always ‘Markey-lad’, never Mark, or kid, or even son, as my Pa called me, though I would not complain if he did). “You know this land of your Pa is as flat as a Kansas field can be. And naught but a straight line of fir trees to mark the border of the fields between his land and his neighbors.” “And no branch in a fir tree will hold a clubhouse,” I said dutifully. “Yes, I know. And the only other tree is the weeping willow in the north corner of the east field. And it’s no good to hold a clubhouse either.” His face suddenly looked interested. “A willow you say? I’ve never seen one here.” “It’s hidden behind the firs,” I said without much enthusiasm. “Not sure why it’s there in the first place, really. Unless a bird dropped its seed years ago, and nobody ever took the trouble to uproot it.” “I’ve not been to that part of the field since just after the planting started,” Wallace mused. “Why don’t we go have a look at the corn’s progress after lunch, and you can show me the willow.” True to his word, by mid-afternoon we had checked the growth of the east-field corn (which was growing nicely, as expected) and made our way to the north corner. We pushed our way between the scratchy branches of the interlocking firs, and found ourselves under the willow tree. It was an old tree, by willow standards, its branches dipping all the way down to the ground. Wallace walked over to the sturdy trunk and leaned against it looking up. The wind soughed through the tiny willow leaves, making a sighing, rustling sound. I stood with Wallace, looking up, listening to that sound. Then we both looked at each other, and I knew. He knew that I knew too, could see it in my eyes. He offered me a gentle smile. “Sometimes a treehouse isn’t shaped like a treehouse,” he said thoughtfully. “Sometimes it’s not even up in a tree, mayhap.” he added, “Sometimes it’s just a place a boy can come to to collect his thoughts. A secret place only he knows about.” “Or that he only shares with a friend,” I added before I could stop the words from coming out. I cringed and waited for him to chastise me. To remind me of my place maybe, that I was not a man yet, and could therefore not be considered the friend of someone who was. I waited. After a minute or so, I raised my eyes and looked into his. His face was not angry, was smiling in fact, and his eyes reflected compassion, and maybe regret, but certainly no rejection of what I had said. I spent a lot of time out there after that, and Wallace was right, it was a tree fort, even if it was not off the ground or made of wooden planks. The firs sheltered the willow from most of the wind, and the branches reaches all the way down to the ground, making me feel like I was in a natural tent, shielded from the world outside. I was late coming home for dinner twice that first week because of playing under that tree. The first time my Pa really laid into me about responsibility and about how dangerous it could be to wander off the farm if no one knew where I was going. I took the scolding in stride, not wanting to give up my secret. Wallace kept his peace too, though when I snuck a look at his face at the dinner table that night he looked at Pa like he would like to tell him. Pa must have seen that look, because two days later when I missed dinner completely, instead of searching the farm for me, he began searching for answers with Wallace. “It’s not much of a secret,” Wallace finally admitted. I know he told my Pa this because I had snuck back in the house just in time to hear it. “My son doesn’t have secrets,” Pa insisted. “If he’s fallen into some wrongdoing, you’ve got to tell me.” “It’s the willow tree out on the corner of your land,” Wallace told him. “The boy wanted a private place, and that’s where he goes to have it.” Pa’s face scrunched up tight, and I thought he was going to start thundering at Wallace, maybe even get so mad he’d make him leave the farm. I stood up from my hiding spot behind the kitchen door, bracing myself to come to Wallace’s defense and own up to what I had done. Then Pa’s face broke into a sunny smile, such as I had never seen before. “Why, his own Ma used to play under that willow when she was a little girl. She told me once how safe that tree made her feel. Like she was in her own private world.” And just like that, the conversation was over. I waited until they had left, and slipped back to my room, not minding that my belly was still empty. Wallace had given me up, in a way, but in doing so had given me the freedom to return to the willow anytime I wanted to, and that put a glad feeling in my stomach where dinner usually lay. Over the next couple of weeks, Wallace taught me to tell time by where the sun stood in the summertime sky. I caught on quickly, and for the rest of the summer I was on time for dinner. As much time as I spent under the willow, pretending my boyhood adventures, I also took equal time with Wallace. I had come to love him, you see, and look up to him, the way a boy does with an older man who takes the time to help bring a boy along. One evening, after supper, I followed him out to the barn. I watched him as he tended the animals, checking their feed and water before climbing up into the loft. He saw me looking at him, and just let me look in that quiet way he had about him. When he started up the loft stairs I called up after him. “Mind if I come up too?” I asked timidly. “Just for a bit?” He shrugged and continued up the ladder without a pause, as if he had expected my question. “Suit yourself,” he said. “As long as you’re in your own bed when your Ma wants you to be.” I had not been in the loft since he had come to stay at the farm, and I was somewhat disappointed that it looked the same as before he had come. He had moved some fresh hay into a bed shape in one corner, and his cloth sack lay beside it. Otherwise it looked as if no one had been living in the loft at all. Wallace settled on his make-shift bed and pulled open his pack. I settled on the bare boards cross-legged, and looked on with considerable interest at what he might want enough to carry with him from one farm to the next. What he pulled out was a book. Then he pulled out another, and set the cloth bag aside. The discarded bag was flat-looking then, and I knew it had divulged all its secrets. He looked up and caught my expression. I must have looked as surprised as I felt, because he smiled ruefully. “My one weakness, I’m afraid,” he said, gesturing to the books. One was red, the other blue, both with cloth covers and loose bindings. They were faded and used-looking, and I wondered how a body could value something that had been on the earth for as long as those books. Then I remembered my willow tree, and I figured the books were maybe the same for Wallace. “We each have our secret place,” he said softly, as if reading my heart. “I found mine here.” He patted the two books, each in their turn, then barked out a laugh. “One of them isn’t even in English, but that doesn’t seem to matter. They belong to me. You can understand that, can’t you, Markey-lad?” I could, and I said so. We talked a bit more that evening, about nothing much at all. Then I went down the ladder and off to my own bed, feeling even closer to Wallace than I had before. So when Wallace began to change toward me later on, I noticed it right away. It was at the beginning of the fall harvest, and we all had more work to do than our feet had time to move us to. Even still, he had always had time for me, no matter how busy his hands were. But that early fall morning, he walked right past me, without so much as a nod. I followed him out to where the farm equipment was stored, and asked him if something was wrong. He shook his head and waved me on. “Move along, Markey-lad,” he said shortly. “You know you’ve chores to do. Best get to it.” “But I only wanted to ask you about the weeping willow,” I replied. “The bark is turning red-brown and the leaves are yellow and falling.” “That is the natural way of it Markey-lad,” Wallace said without looking at me. “The willow is preparing for it’s rest. If the winter is not too harsh for it, mayhap it will leaf out again in the spring.” I stared at Wallace for a few minutes in the cool fall morning light, noticing for the first time his hair had grayed quite a bit since he had arrived, and there were lines in his face where none had been before. His movements too, so fluid in the spring, were now a bit more careful, the way people moved around when arthritis had come to walk with them, and they had to be careful, lest they bump into it. “Farm work is hard on the body,” Wallace said then, seeming to read my thoughts. “But not harder than a father who sees his son daydreaming during harvest time. Best get to work, Markey-lad.” So I did. Reflecting back, that was probably the last real conversation I had with Wallace. The crops do not bring themselves in, so they say, and some years they seem to resist you when you try to help them along. That fall was one of those years, and it was everything we could do to get the harvest in before first frost. We did it though, just barely, and afterward Pa paid Wallace for his season’s work. This was in 1949, and the minimum wage act had just been passed the year before. Things take longer to filter out to the farmlands was the saying back then, and paying a farmhand forty cents an hour was a law landowners were not in a hurry to catch on to. But Pa was not the average farmer, not if pride was the measure, and he paid Wallace in full. I was there when it happened, on the first Saturday after the crops had been sold at market, and I saw the look on Wallace’s face. If a stranger had been there, seeing the exchange, he never would have guessed he was looking at payday. Wallace looked at the money Pa laid in his palm as if it were the forty pieces of silver Judas was paid, instead of the forty cents an hour he had earned. Pa saw the look. Then he made the biggest mistake he would ever make in his life. He took the look for modesty. “You deserve every penny,” he told Wallace sincerely, and clapped him on the back. And Wallace’s expression closed somehow, changed to one that looked more like modesty, and he thanked Pa and shook his hand. Ma beamed at both of them and soon I was smiling too, putting the feeling I’d had about Wallace behind a wall of forgetfulness. It was less than a week after that when it happened. I was out under the weeping willow again, though the leaves were all but gone, and the season made being outside uncomfortable. Suddenly, I got the most awful feeling, like someone had sucker-punched me. I did not understand about premonition then, but that was what it had to have been. Something was wrong at home, something bad, and it got my feet moving in a hurry. I remember that run most clearly in the events that happened that day. The cold, brisk October wind blew through me as I hurried across the fields, pushing at me, seeming to try and hold me back from getting home. The cold sank into my bones and stiffened my strides until I felt like I was running with someone else’s legs. Still I pushed on, finally stumbling up the back porch steps and bursting into the kitchen out of breath. I saw Wallace first, standing in the middle of the kitchen, his red book open in his hands. He had aged terribly in the few hours since I had left across the fields that morning, now looking to be more than eighty if he was a day. That alone froze me in my steps, and I opened my mouth, meaning to interrupt what he was reading aloud, to ask HOW that could possibly be. Then the details of the rest of the kitchen sunk into my senses, and I shut my mouth with a snap. The overturned kitchen table. The smell of burned grits coming from a pan still simmering on the stove. The two figures, my Ma and Pa, lying crumpled on the ground in the corner next to the table. Most of all I noticed the sudden silence. Wallace had stopped reading and was looking at me. I met those eyes, the ones I had looked to so many times for guidance this year. In them I saw some regret, but mostly a coldness that chilled me more than any October wind was capable of. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t be back so soon,” he said, and his tone was set, measured. “I can’t let you go, of course. But maybe I can spare your life.” I tried to run then, but he spoke words from his book that froze me in my place. He fished the blue book out of his cloth bag (his traveling bag, and it was once again attached to the loop on his waist), and opened it so that he held both books open, one in each hand. He began chanting rhythmic words that had no meaning to me. They lulled my trip-hammering heart, calmed me, put me into a near doze. All at once I began to feel less ’there’, as if I was ceasing to exist. I hate to admit it, for it’s a coward’s heart that feels it, but I was GLAD to be fading, glad that the worry for my parents and the feeling of betrayal from Wallace were leaving my mind. Then there was a sucking sensation, as if something was pulling at my toes. The feeling spread, up my legs, my torso, then my arms. The last to be pulled was my head, and I was afraid despite the calming words, because I could see the bottom parts of me and where they were going. I had become liquid and mobile. It was painless, at least there was that, but horrifying, watching my body swirl and twist through the air, flowing toward that red book. Then my head was liquid too, and there was just the sensation of being moved through space. The last words I heard with ears were from his lips, and they were cold comfort indeed. “I regret this Markey-lad,” he said gently to my new residence, the pages of the blue book. “You have no idea how much. But I’ve lived this half-life so long. I needed their energy to be young again. Can you understand that? And with two, that’s two seasons before I begin to age. A man can walk a far distance in two seasons. Far enough to be in a different part of the country, where no one’s heard of Wallace.” There he stopped, and I thought maybe he was considering letting me go from whatever purgatory he had sent me to. But he was merely going outside, putting his increasingly younger legs to good use to put some distance between himself and the mummified husks in the kitchen. Then he closed the blue book and I knew nothing, was nothing, for a very long time. Later, in other towns, in other barn lofts, he would sometimes take out the blue book he’d put me in. Fewer times still, he would open it and talk to me, telling me of his travels and his search for one more special book. There were three in all, you see. A red one, which held the words. A blue one, to store up souls. The last was yellow, and he believed it had the power to release those who were held captive by the first two. He even told me the method by which I could be freed, should he ever find the book. It was harsh, this way he explained, not true freedom at all, but an even exchange of souls, one being pulled in to allow another to escape. Even after he told me of it, even after I saw the chance to do it, I resisted. Until now. Time has a way of wearing at a soul, eroding it. Often what is revealed was better kept hidden, and it may be that way with mine own. What Wallace said about the weeping willow was a clue, I know that now. The part about everything needing rest. That is the key to the yellow book. The book itself is not very impressive. Just a bit of entertainment in an unassuming package. The words of imprisonment are hidden throughout its pages, undetectable unless you placed them there yourself. Or have been trapped long enough to invent your own. Ive altered a few of the words, just enough to make the exchange the next time someone reads the whole book. I even tried to make it less distressing than my own imprisonment had been by adding a phrase that holds the magic until the reader sleeps. This is the last story in the book you hold in your hands. I hope you have enjoyed it. Take a break now to savor the world around you. Enjoy a good meal. One that will keep you for awhile. And when you lay your head down to sleep tonight, remember what my old friend Wallace said. “Time is short. I’ve got to get done what I will in the time I’ve got left.” I have a man I need to find, to repay. And you look like you could use a long rest. Pleasant dreams
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 14:19:32 +0000
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