The Words of the
King:
On the Cause of
Thunder and the Smells of Mortality
“It’s a strange
country, this being old.”
–Frederick
Turner
“If you’re going
to write about madness maybe you should be a little mad yourself.”
–Michael Sexson
“You speak the words, but I know what they
mean. Don’t try to tell me I speak them incorrectly, you goddamn footstool.”
“Okay, dad.” The young man sighed and
turned back to the book in his hand.
The old man felt an insane smile spread on
his face and his son felt it pestering the side of his own. “Why are you here?”
The boy answered without looking up from
his book, “Because I want to see you.”
“You come in my room—this sanctuary you
have locked me in—and you open your slim books and you read in your own head.
Why are you here?”
“What would you like me to say?” The boy,
as though it were such a great inconvenience, closed his book, one finger still
holding his page, and crossed his arms against his knee, leaning toward his
father.
The old man erupted. Laughter sprawled out
of his mind and it stole all the air from the cramped room. Through the rolls
of thunder, he spoke, sputtering but strong, “The Ham and the King are the
same.” The boy looked puzzled, angrily, hating his inability to explain his
father away with madness. The man stopped laughing: cut off as with a sword.
His pointing finger cut the air and smacked his boy in the face without ever
touching him. “And you, boy, you smell of mortality.” The boy, for the first
time, allowed concern to show in his eyes. “Why are you here?”
“Do you want me to leave, dad?”
The old man sat back in his stark bed and
nodded solemnly, as though to himself. His eyes gazed far afield. “So it goes
with God.”
The man barely noticed as his son
conspicuously collected his items. The man was no longer present in the room;
he was in another state entirely, and many years in the past. Noticing this
blankness in his father’s demeanor, the boy hesitated for a moment just on the
threshold. He looked over his shoulder, hand on the doorknob; his brows
furrowed as he shook his head and closed the door behind his disappearing form.
Sun streamed through an open window and
fell onto a glowing tabletop; the light reflected from the glass and lit up the
already beaming face of a young woman. She chuckled at something I said. In a
moment that felt like an hour she blinked, reveling in the humor, and looked up
from the table—right at me. She looked up only with her eyes, her face tilted
only slightly in my direction. And then it was over and she was just smiling at
the tabletop again. The sun matched the color, but was seemingly more dull
than, her hair. It couldn’t touch the strands, but painted a halo about her
head. Then I heard my own voice—stronger and more resolute then—say, “I have to
leave for work soon.”
She kept her eyes on the table—I think she
had papers laid out there. “I know you’ll have a wonderful day, Sweetheart.”
Why didn’t I tell her I loved her? I should
have, right in that moment; I should have let her know in every single
breathing moment, but I waited until later, right before I stepped out the
door. And she smiled, everywhere. She smiled in her eyes, in her laugh, in her
cheeks, and she said, “I love you too,” and she kissed me ever so slightly on
my lips. I went to work.
“Hello, Mr. Leon! How was your visit with
your son?”
Sun streamed through the open window and
fell onto a stark bed sheet—too crisp and too white. “Close the blinds, will
you?”
The nurse kept her smile plastered to her
face, and sauntered toward the window. “Of course, Mr. Leon. Would you like to
eat something? It’s noon.” She turned from the window to see the old man’s eyes
gazing far afield. She shook her head slowly and crossed the threshold, leaving
the man alone. In the hallway her voice broke through the door, “That man is
losing it, Sharon.”
Inside, the old man laughed. He stretched
his hand off the ledge of the bed and clasped the air. “She thinks I’m crazy,
Honey.” The woman with glowing hair smiled back at him. Letting her hand be
surrounded by her husband’s, she lifted his fingers to her mouth and kissed
them. “She smells of mortality.” The woman nodded. “They act for me, Elisa. The
nurse comes in and she plasters that smile on her face and she squeaks at me,
but I can hear her offstage. She’s a bad actor.” The woman nodded, grinning
amusedly from her glowing eyes. “And my boy, he comes in this spick and span
room and he sits there and he smirks at me. He pretends this doesn’t hurt.” He
growled. “It hurts him.”
The woman’s eyebrow rose, tears behind her
eyes. “Do you want to hurt him?”
The old man settled into his white
pillows, grumbling tiredly. “No.” The woman patted his hand, his voice turned
soft, “I don’t want him to hurt.” He tore his eyes from the woman and turned
them to space.
She spoke just barely. “You just don’t
want to die.”
His eyes were still directed toward space.
“Readiness is all, Dear.”
“Ripeness.”
He smiled, uncontrollably.
A minute cough sounded in the hallway. The
man cocked his head as if to listen better. “Did you hear a cough?” There was a
matching, tiny knock at the door; it opened, stage right. In shuffled a
small—only for her slouching—young woman, radiant even through her shyness. The
man sat up, face filled with light. “Ah, my nothing!”
She smiled and entered the room
wholeheartedly, “Because nothing is everything.”
The man nodded. “Would you close the door
behind you, please?”
Having already journeyed toward her
father, the young woman turned back, placed a soft hand to the white wood of
the door and pushed it shut. “The nurse says you’re zoning out more often. She
thinks you’re losing it.” She spoke almost mockingly, but still with a small
voice.
The man spread his arms, cocked his head,
and grinned. “Why that’s because I have lost it; I’ve gone mad, Honeybee.” He
leaned forward and whispered, “I’m crazy.”
Shrugging off his torments she grabbed a
book couched on the stiff armchair in the corner of the room—shoved as far into
the corner as possible, the chair was a bright teal contrasting the white walls
wondrously. She tossed the book toward the bed. It wafted through the air,
“Yeah, you seem far out of your wits,” and landed in his lap.
He lifted his decrepit copy of Hamlet.
“The mad ones are the only ones who can really read. You must know that.”
“Whatever you say, Hammy—if you ask me,
you’re putting on an act: all the world wouldn’t you say?” She walked toward
his bed and sat in the empty chair waiting for her.
A shuttering whisper (an image of golden
hair) boxed his ear, “Do you love her?” His smile faltered and for a moment he
felt cold, alone.
A knock at the door and a nurse peeked in,
“How are you in here?”
The young woman, eyes locked on her father
responded immediately, “Stark-raving.”
The nurse pushed further into the room,
“Ma’am?”
The young woman laughed, looked over her
shoulder at this stranger and spoke, “We’re fine, thank you.” The nurse
plastered a plastic smile on her face and left, shutting the door behind her.
My car pulled into the driveway just after
the sun went down; the sky was still lit, but it glowed from every heavenly
square rather from the one celestial body. Elisa looked most beautiful in this
light; I pictured her as I sat in my frozen car. Only after I stepped from the
metal frame did I realize it was raining; it might not have actually been
raining, but in my memory it was indeed pouring. I ran into the house without
realizing just how dark and still it was. It was dead: no dinner, no light, no
noise. Then the telephone rang, and I don’t remember much afterward.
“What are you doing here, Stephen?”
The man spun about in the dark; he felt
his body grow old again, no longer the spritely youth of his memory. He stared
in shock at the golden-haired woman lounging in the love seat below the now
ominously glowing window. He stared from his stooped and weakened form. “You
weren’t here, Elisa; I know you weren’t.”
“Stop it, Stephen.”
“Why are you angry, Elisa?” The man’s
voice shook.
“I want to know why you’re here. There is
nothing here.” Her eyes locked on him from across the room, until they were
suddenly right in front of him; they seemed to have grown three sizes and the
force pushed him back. “There is nothing here.”
“I didn’t mean to come here; I just—“
“You just wandered off? You couldn’t
control it? Maybe you really are going mad.”
“It’s the mad one—“
“It’s the mad ones who understand the
world.” Her voice squealed in mockery, cutting off the smaller voice of her
past love. “You want to know why I’m angry, Stephen?” Her question was
contemptuously soft and low, a delicate whisper. He didn’t nod, too frightened
to move, but curiosity—and concern—showed in his face no matter how he tried to
stifle it. “I’m mad because you have a family and I don’t.” She wandered about
the dark room slowly, eyes stuck to the old man all the way. Her fingertips
grazed each piece of furniture as she passed it. “But that in itself doesn’t
pester me so. I hate that you hate them: all but the one, your precious, little
nothing.”
“Go away.”
Her laugh galloped through the house until
she suddenly cut it off; her eyes blazed. “You
get out; this place is mine. You moved on and left nothing.”
“You’re not mad, Elisa, you’re insane; you
don’t understand.”
“I don’t understand nothing? I am nothing,
Stephen.” She sauntered toward the old man until they stood nose to nose. “I
don’t exist.”
“Dad?” The young woman nudged her father.
“Dad, wake up.” The old man’s eyes fluttered open to find again the stark,
frozen room. Then they landed on his daughter. “You fell asleep on me.” She
chuckled and pushed his shoulder playfully, a slight nervousness behind her
eyes.
The old man smiled. “I have nothing here,
Honeybee.”
His daughter pulled her chair closer to
his bed. “No, Hammy, nothing is here.” She touched a finger to her father’s
forehead. “And here.” And again to his chest.
He laughed softly, a rumbling deep in his
lungs. “No one here understands, but you.”
“You were born to the wrong period.”
Laughter leaked through her voice.
At this, his own mirth boiled out of him
wholeheartedly. “No I wasn’t, Dear. I was born to study the words, not to live
in them.”
His daughter leaned in to his scruffy ear.
“You’re mad.”
He put his lips to her ear in turn and
whispered, “I know.”
It was late, or early; death tends to
muddle time. The old man was alone in his now silver room; he had asked earlier
for his blinds to be opened to their greatest extent so as to allow the
moonlight free reign. He was doused in it. There was no son with him, no
daughter, no golden haired ghost. He had nothing, and then he passed only
further into it. It was not violent, or showy and dramatic in any way: he
simply allowed the nothingness to finally overcome his mind. When his heart
stopped beating, no one could ever determine for sure, but it was not in that
initial instant. He felt nothing for whole moments; he was conscious in
nothing—a sensation allowed only to those on the cusp of a dream. And then he
fell into the grandest dream of all.
On the bedside table, moonlight
illuminated a shining scrap of paper. On this, one sentence was scrawled.
I hope one day
you can go mad, Honeybee, and understand the world; I have full faith in you.
