I
The city of
wood and sticks (also
called Wicker City), with
its shacks and
huts, and tin roofed tops; ceilings clumped together, side by side
among along with a few red brick lower level
structured buildings seemingly buildings with plywood and bamboo upper levels;
the city more of a handyman’s dilemma of perhaps ten-thousand, had a main open
street entrance, a dozen thin black folk ran about as the old man passed,
called
the shepherd. Seeing the narrow roads
between the dense shacks and buildings—all in a big square perhaps in a plaza
like surroundings of four
acres. Out of nowhere a man of no great
size or built, with long black-kinky hair: who had on a torn black and patched
cloaked that might have
been
at one time a blanket, smiled at the old man, as he hastily walked by, turning
into the maze of wobbly looking structures: huts, and shanties,
of every size and dimension, and
crisscrossing dirt path for roads. Thus, the old white man found his way among
a huddled of black folk. Thin
young faces, that appeared, and
disappeared as if in a moving cloud; all faces with little to no joy in them;
the light of life burnt out of them, eyes
blank, and formed so finely, half shut
from lack of sleep, and from the wind dust, burnt their brows scorched by the
sun, patched on both sides of
their faces. No more than, trotting rats,
walking barefoot, on their
heeds, as if not to burn their feet in
the sand more than possible.
The
rats watched these passersby in little clumps, as
if waiting for a
striking moment, to find the weakest of
the lot, weak enough to leap
upon and gnaw into their thigh, without
contest, for a pound of flesh.
No
children stood laughing, nor shouting together, did they stand
separated but together, as to show
unity, and in their silent stare you could read their lips, one to another:
“Who’s that old white man? Their
minds in question. Down from a wooden fence one jumped, to get a
better look: and the calm that had been on the old man’s face, turned into
estrangement, it was as if he became deaf
to all the sounds around him, His eyes like two gibbous moons, and he lifted
his head to see it all,
from end to end, his lips moving, his
eyes twitching, his jaw jerky, the children about him, jeering children, at his
body movements;
behind him, old women watching, he drew
nervously on before them all, like an old ramrod in spite of his nervousness:
like an old an old ox,
sinking into the sand from step to step.
One
look, long look, was most that all gave the old man, never looking
back, as if it was too much effort, nor
to the edge closer to see him further advancing. There was no interest in the
old man.
II
This was their world, the old
man knew, and no man was its measure, and
no man’s mind could telescope such a
scene, now entering a particle, a subdivision of this local, like a freak
circus fenced into to this Wicker City
of sorts, as if on the shores of a small
continent, within a galaxy: innumerable pens were about, and an onslaught of
freaky humanity in
them. It brought the world to focus in
the old man’s feeling brain.
In
clear nerves, in an infectious splendor of ugliness, he witnessed the
bleak, the somnambulism of nature…everyone
in the pigpens were in a half dead sleep. Seeing what he was seeing he could
have screamed in pain.
The killer of disgraceful pleasures,
whomever, had put these human beings into pigsties, chained them to posts, put
earing in their noses and
ears, and there was two men, so it
looked like men grown together, and a third leaned his body halfway on them, as
if three heads were connected, like the hounds of
hell. Flees and flies, circulating their
scabby bodies, teeth yellow, and black with gaps. Per near naked, lying still
against the sting heat of the
day. How did they hang onto life? Asked
the old man, to his second mind, as he walked from pen to pen? Suddenly his
mind became incapable
of clear focus on this striking circus
of humanity, yet his mind wildly active, like a snake trying to dodge a fire. A
man’s chin rested upon his fist,
in one of the stalls; the old man’s kidneys
became weak, his adrenal glands floating: passions pouring out of him in
violent secretions, yet he
knew this unbearable scent, grave as it
was, there was a law of vengeance, and he was here to observe, not to strike
out, or to try and
cure the dementia in each and every stall, or
pen. He was there for a purpose but, it was not this. All those faces in all
those coops, and cages,
and pen, looked timidly at him,
imprisonment for life, so it appeared. He even thought of himself as the
penitentiary doctor, and he was being told
of all this madness. And all those souls
in these pens, as if kidnapped,
in a state of paralysis, and yet no
complaining. As if they understood. Frightful suffering.
The
old man noticed most everyone’s skulls were so sucking inward-thin,
bones sticking out, so light and reedy, you
could put each one of them into one palm.
Their skin stretched on their faces like leather. And then he found the
entrance out.
III
The prostitute that walked now
beside
him, greasy brown to black skin, a bundle of hair tied tightly down
on her head, some in cords, looked like
wool, and young whores and children running by, snatched a look at him, none
offered a threat, then he
saw several young women with their
bodies glazed-dark from the sun that seeped into the tent’s environment,
greased with a white kind of
lubricant. The tent like structure was—he
supposed—one of many among the thousands of wooden structures in the city, made
of a brown to
rosy-barked wicker-wood, possible a
stick wood, with planks, boards,
timber patches going every-which-way.
The
whole place stunk with a sickness, and foulness, that even now laid in
the old man’s close, sinking deep into
his nostrils.
“Oh please, Oh please,” a meek young
woman cried to the old man, as if she was one of his ewes. She was no more than eighteen year old girl,
shrilled, “Cure my body, make me healthy
again,” she had bumps all over her chest, and arms and face and legs, white and
red pimples, and dying eyes.
“You let the old man alone,” said
another woman nearby. But the brown skinned Negress stepped forward and started
to cry; “Not so close” said another women to the young negress,
she was nearly into the face of the old
man, then out of some compulsive act—followed so quietly and quickly, a gentle
cry—
“You can cure me, I know you
can,”
and she put both her hands on the old man’s chest. The old man answered, “I
cannot heal you, but Christ, can!” “You
can,” she said, and the
old man repeated, “It’s a small road,
you will have to believe that Christ can and will heal you, if not through me,
through his Mother Mary, and then
through me, but it will come from Him,
do you believe?”
It
was a shallow moment, then the women said “Yes, I believe it can be that
way, I believe,” it was to the old man
like one stone to another stone, but she
felt safe in using the old man, and hearing a female’s name, Mary
for a vessel to Christ, so he
said under his breath, “If it be your
will Lord, please heal her,” and she was healed, right then and there; it was a
marvel, her body smooth as silk, her flesh restored to a healthy look. And all those who saw stepped closer as
if they were animals sniffing. And then another woman ran up to the old man,
said “I want to be heal too,” but she could not believe, and the old
man told her, “If you go into the
pastures, where sick sheep have walked, healthy cows will not pass; thus, how
can you be healed .”
“But you can still walk into the
pasture, can you not?” was her answered.
The
friendly old man went out of the wicker wooden tent, “good-bye” he said to the
women. And the whores among the flock went about their
business, as if he never was, and the
one who got healed, was nowhere to be found.
IV
The old Shepard, laughed, he was glad, he had
undid the bundle of sickness, most likely
Satan or her imps had
plagued
the young woman with. He had shared his Lord with one sheep;
with one of the Lord’s sheep that is.
Perhaps
even pushed down the iron fences Satan’s henchmen had built
over the centuries, now the folks of the
wicker city, were curious.
A
man ran by, he had a torch in his hands, with flickering white and red
flames, it gave off a rosy-color, bathed
in the hot blue sky, and he
threw it at one of the largest giant wood constructions, and it went ablaze,
And
the strangely tall structure intensely went dark on a layer of gray
colored smoke, into the high tender
blue, turned amber, then ebony
black, thick-branched columns fell in
flames.
Fed
on a moment, two other buildings caught on fire, and the old man now
could hear hooved cries, and crisp wood
burning, people beating the flames. On
the brink of a nearby stream, people brought buckets of water,
to fight the fire. While others lay down together in the glade,
watching the fire while others sat combing one another’s hair; gap-toothed, laughing at the
catastrophe. Then as evening came, the
thick black strands and fire that hissed
from the inside of the wood, fell to a
glimmer with twilight, yet all still felt the warmth of the heat, and
their bodies moaned and itched as if
they were heavy with fungus and flees.
Note: Why the dream? Perhaps it
is a message: if all we do in our life time is save one soul, and our own, then
it was worth the voyage to earth.
No: 4465 (7-12-2014)
From a Dream
