Tragedy Of Crows: Chapter 1 (2) “Well, we’re just going to get inspiration. I find that…” she spoke while he focused on his headache. This was her chance to speak in poetry. She was the only person he knew who spoke in poetry like it was a dialect of English. There was a sighing and brushing of syllables, all seeming very typical, but appreciable in their ritual emphases. It reminded him of the way the adults spoke on Sesame Street, slow and expressive, but the content…. It was always the same if there was any at all. She enjoyed saying she loved things, and he was terribly confused, not by her speeches, but by the fact she had called on him to hear them. “The sun gives you cancer,” he said picking up a white tablet from the floor. “I don’t want it, today.” “Well, suite yourself,” she said. He ignored it. “Do I call you up on the weekends and ask if you want to smoke cigarettes with me?” he asked pulling his leather jacket from the floor, some folded papers fell as well as a yellow Bic lighter. “No,” she said, still unfazed. He could never faze her. He could yell at his own mother on a collect call. He could drop kick a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass down a hillside. He could tell the Dean to “get a real job,” and he was reasonably sure that he could become violent, although he hadn’t been in the past. Still, there was no way he could change Maria’s mood. She was a solid, slab of chipper gaiety, and even though he had admitted defeat, accepting her as an acquaintance, he would never give up the opportunity to battle her on his terms. “And when I’m out at some dive bar playing pool with forty-year-old townies, do you think I get the desire to call you up?” he asked. “No,” she said. “But you’ve never asked. I hope it’s not, because I’ve been so busy this week. We’ve been so busy at the conference, and oh, there was this guy reading last night that you would have loved, he…” “no, no, no, hold it right there,” Hazzard sputtered brushing long, dark brown hair out of his eyes. Tiny fuzz balls were released into the air. “I don’t want to hear about the conference. I wasn’t invited, remember? I am here to work, not listen to old farts ramble about their summer vacations in Europe like that last reader you made me see.” “Nobody dragged you there, but I’m sorry you didn’t like it,” she said simply. She wouldn’t argue. She absolutely refused to be offended. “I hate you,” Hazzard said. She laughed and said, “well, we’ll be leaving from outside the dorm tomorrow afternoon. I’ll see you there at about five o’clock, I hope. I have to go, now, because I’ve got to get to the gym before it closes. Yesterday, I did three hundred crunches. Pretty sweet, huh? You take care, now.” “what?” Hazzard muttered. She was doing it again, Hazzard thought, leaving him no choice but to show up at the appointed time to tell her what he really thought of her. Of course, there would be other people there, and he might have to wait until they were alone, and that would mean taking the bus out to the lake. Even if he didn’t get the chance to tell her off, he could at least be as miserable as possible the entire afternoon. That would show her, for sure. She’d definitely stop bothering him after that. “bye,” she said, and clicked away. Hazzard listened to the tone for a while and then tossed his phone to the floor. The thwack of plastic against an empty wine bottle was the last sound it ever made. *** Hazzard spent the rest of the day preparing for the hike. His backpack was a little heavy, but he had to have adequate defenses. One didn’t go into a war without ammunition, and there was no way Hazzard was going deal with Maria and her insidiously sappy smile without an ample supply of alcohol and cigarettes. In the main compartment, he packed a half-empty bottle of Southern Comfort and two shot glasses, one a double, one a single. In the front compartment, he crammed a fresh pack of Pall Malls and his lighter. In the back compartment, Hazzard stacked eight cans of Natural Ice beer, two writing notebooks, one full, one blank, and a screwdriver in a 20ounce Pepsi bottle. It was scarcely enough to deal with her, but it was all he could fit inside his book bag. Maria was standing outside the residence hall, her long, brown legs poking out of white shorts. Her dark-blue, oversized Hartwick College Track & Field shirt flapped in a faint breeze. Hazzard sneezed. The pollen count was high. It would probably rain. The trees at the lake would probably be moist and sticky. The mud-line around the water would be swollen for sure. He knew all this, but she smiled and stretched her palms to the sky slowly spreading like a long, yawn. It might have been the sun, somewhere, felt behind a few hapless puffs of cloud. Hazzard didn’t see that, only in the muddy swirl of liquid rainbows churning around the gutter of the parking lot. He stepped on a pavement crack, and she heard the door shut behind him. When she turned her hair raised to the wind. He got the timing down some ten head turns ago. He knew how and when it would fall to her shoulders. Beneath that vision of fine brown lines in flight, there was a sound he had been straining to hear. It was soft, but somewhat like a snare drum. It was the elongated thrust of a morocka, only it seemed nearly silent. Summer bugs were spinning. Summer sounds were throbbing for attention. He couldn’t hear much past the annoyance of bugs in whirls and winds rustling grass blades. By the time her hair bounced against the slope of her neck, he had stopped trying. A cigarette appeared in his left hand. He smiled through a smoky breath, until she smiled back. He had the timing down, and he braced himself for the dreadful flare that ignited her eyes after every smile. Her eyes were hazel. In his life, so many women he had met or seen had hazel eyes. So many degrees of hazel pervaded his memory. When he tried to be an artist, he drew out histories of the eyes he had seen. He knew shades by equivalent pencil pressure. He felt the gradients change, infused with lightness from the sun peaking out from behind the clouds. He felt squeamish. He felt a pressure change. “Hi-ee,” she said lowering her arms to perform a light slap upon the sides of her thighs. “Hey,” Hazzard replied. “I knew you’d be here,” she said. Her chest rose up and her head fell back. She sniffed inward a burst of sensation, as if she had been thirsting for the air. Hazzard’s hands shook. The two students both wanted to get to the lake, but they had to wait for the van to arrive. The campus gave them vans for these poetry things. They were even more apt to supply the vans if it meant that students would do something involving the lake. For the sake of fresh air, a dark-blue mini-van pulled up, coughing out a broth of deep grays. Hazzard blew his own airy stream into the mixture. Inside the van, a few of their fellow students sat with book bags and water bottles. The college had purchased the land around the lake a few years ago, logging some and leaving some to become the “environmental” campus. Students were encouraged to make frequent visits. Faculty found various ways to work the lake into the course curriculum. Hazzard’s creative writing class met there once before. Maria was cheerfully in attendance. All the others in the van had been to the lake at least once. Brian Southworth was a sophomore English major who had been to the lake for several faculty poetry reading. James L. Ronald was a junior English major who had been to the lake for an outdoor production of “Waiting for Godet”. Jen Seers had no declared major, considering Theater Arts as a minor. She had been to the lake for a seminar discussing sexism in the workplace. These students had stayed on campus for the summer, either working for English professors at the poetry conference or working for the college admissions department to help secure prospective students. Hazzard knew them by the trash they left. On weekdays, he cleaned their offices. He emptied their trashcans, cleaned their windows, threw out the soggy, turkey and cheese sandwich left on a dresser. He was no stranger to their rooms, unmade beds, and dirty dishes. He had been to the poetry conference, always after a famous poet’s exit, to clean up the room with a rag and a spray bottle. Where they let a wine glass rest, he scrubbed out the red half moon of grime. Where they shaved, he wiped away the gray and black speckles. He bagged the disposable pillows where they rested their highly respected heads. Hazzard smoked cigarettes through the aftermath of every great visitor. The last poet Maria had asked him to see had left every piece of paper accumulated from the conference in a big pile on the floor. Hazzard sifted through the unfinished poems that had been presented to the poet at the workshops. The poet did not need them, and Hazzard gave only a sigh before giving them a final bit of attention. On occasion, he took what they sent on the way to the dumpster. Once, a poet called the maintenance office asking if any of the janitors had seen his bathrobe. Hazzard’s boss had made an inquiry. No one replied. Everyone in the van replied to Maria’s energetic greeting. No one would expect anything less than an energetic greeting from Maria. Most students had a profound appreciation for her noted enthusiasm. A small pocket of students were seriously concerned that she was insane. Her glee seemed ceaseless and her energy level never wavered. Behind her smile was a long story for sure, things conquered in furious rhythmic strides, but Hazzard could never get more than a few details. Details were never enough. The fall of that smile would be enough, a fall that resulted in more than a yawn, a sigh, or a speech. It would have to be a fall back into the worst of the past. It would have to be a definite sense of defeat, an admittance to falsehood, an acceptance of grief and hopelessness. He didn’t know why he felt this about her. Always with her some fusion escaped him, especially when he could not maintain a gaze upon her eyes. He could recall times, once or twice, when long, tanned arms darted out at him in an empty response to his bewildered stare. He shrugged away. He groaned. He muttered, and then she laughed like a child having eyed a silly, stumbling animal. “You can’t smoke that in the van,” Brian said. Hazzard ground the last bit of a Pall Mall into the side of the van. A tiny mark of dark blue split around the heat revealing the lighter weather-beaten blue of a previous coat of paint. Hazzard smiled and found a seat in the back. Bottles clanked as his bag hit the mini-van floor. Hazzard disappeared behind wrap-around black, plastic sunglasses. When he was in High School, he had really wished to be a rock star like Bono, Michael Stipe, or Geddy Lee. As soon as his mother had gotten the proofs for his Senior pictures, he started letting his hair grow. Two and a half years later, Hazzard had accumulated a wide variety of rock star accessories including a leather jacket from a garage sale, an eyebrow ring with a black bead, a plastic skull key chain, ripped and faded black stone-washed jeans, and a ragged pile of dark brown, wild hair grown out almost to his waist. Hazzard scratched at the spiky brown tuft on the end of his chin. He thought of Weilend, crooning the gruff anthems of the Stone Temple Pilots. He thought of Geddy Lee screaming over the splintered heartthrob of his bass guitar. He thought of countless other names and sounds. He chose Charley Musslewhite harmonica atop the blues. In the front of the van, a great many names and books were being discussed. Hazzard’s defense buzzed the metal and plastic of blasting headphones. Arriving at the lake, Maria had them all laughing. She could always run a crowd of any caliber. Once, she offered up drinks at a reception for visiting poets. Hazzard was there, dressed in a white shirt and black pants. He had to keep reminding himself to take empty cups from the left and serve from the right. Or was it the other way? The tequila hadn’t helped. Maria pirated a glass of champagne for him. He received it in a gulp and went immediately for a stare into her familiar shade of hazel. When the glass lowered, she was back to entertaining scholars with her favorable appraisal of Robert Pinsky. Hazzard let the alcohol burn into his chest as he watched her. Since then, he had always liked to watch her in a room full of others where he could keep half an ear to the rise of her voice, listening and drinking. Hazzard tapped his book bag to hear the clack of glass upon aluminum. When the crowd pushed to the foot of a tree hugged hillside trail, Hazzard was at a loss for where he might assume his distance. Maria was a fast walker, too. She ran a lot. He heard that she had gained several awards for jumping and running, and stuff like that. He didn’t asked. She didn’t talk to him about it. Once in a while, Hazzard would say congratulations to her at random. She’d say thanks and continue talking about the weather, the water, the thrill of something or other. Hazzard looked up the trail and found it dark. The trees were a still cover. The broken twigs and needles were deep brown in the forest shade. Something seemed wrong, but Maria was smiling, already discussing the daylight with her arms in motion. It felt like late evening, and he wanted to go back to his room where he could call her up and yell at her from a safe distance. Things were being said behind the music in his ears. Hazzard took no notice, until the crowd began to sway towards the foot of the nearest hillside. Their feet had first touched gravel, then faintly yellow grass, and at last, the crispy twigs and soft needles spread below the trees. With combat boats scooping at the ground, Hazzard tossed some dry stuff leaving grooves of dark brown. The dirt smell was beneath a sweet tree fragrance. He strained for the bottom scent, because that sweet smell seemed almost inhumane. A faint sugar coat encrusted the vapors. His sense of smell was bathing in the seasonal wine. The sweet reek of it brought his hand over his mouth. That dirt smell resided deep below, thick and black beneath the sun-dried brown of visibly fallen tree things. On the trees, a shade of gray collected thinly. He touched the brittle lines of bark, not recording the touch, but the tint left on his fingers, imperfect gray. He could barely smell it… barely, but it was everywhere. It was the smell of roadsides in autumn sprayed with a long-delayed rain. It was the smell of sidewalks in a mid-summer’s shower. It was the smell of a campfire put out by a bucket of cold water. He was sensing something through the gritty dust. There was a strong throbbing in it. Hazzard knew the dark clouds were coming. He knew that the sweetness in the air was the last scream of summer trees for the fleeing sun. He knew that the dirt was dry and hungry, grumbling. He had a good memory of any type of falling. Some were bottles on their way to the dump or the recycling bin. This one was rain on its way. “Oh,” Maria said. “I was so hoping the weather would hold out. It was such a nice day when we left.” “I know, I know,” Jen said yawning. She had looked at the clouds through her sunglasses. She didn’t see dark movement, but she realized that it was getting harder to see. Something was surely wrong. They had pressed up the trail for quite a while. They were discussing her professors, all the pointless papers, last minute successes and failures, and the occasional three to five page disasters. She stretched her short, thin fingers through an arm’s length of strawberry blonde hair, thinking about what she might say next. “Well, I thought Prof. Cody was more concerned with presenting an account of his scholarly work than he was with answering the important questions raised by the Romantic movement,” Brian said checking his loose, gold watch. It had stopped for some reason. He paid attention to those sorts of things, the maintenance of his watch, his deep, brown cabdriver hat, his khakis, his education. He didn’t notice that the conversation was shifting to the weather. He responded with the first of many points he had wanted to make. His voice lagged behind the others, losing ground behind a change of air. He did not pay attention to that or the sky. Brian watched the ground to be sure his loafers didn’t press anything suspiciously squishy. Hazzard tried not to think about them. Instead, he was trying to envision something really fantastic to accompany the sound of a Steve Howe guitar solo. For a moment or two, he tried seeing nature. He looked for rhythms in the sway of leaves, but nothing was furiously moving. The trees were a still backdrop for the group. The earth sounds fell behind the thud of their feet. He made sure to keep the music down just enough so he could hear them walking in front. For some reason, it was getting darker. The buzz of their conversation was constant. Every once in a while a name flew out to distract him. Sometimes, he knew the poets mentioned, but usually he just knew their names. The library was full of names, and the passage was full of leaves. His focus could not clutch, but the frazzle of it all passing behind him was a bit disturbing. No one stopped to take account of an awkward rock; an ant’s mountain was merely a man’s annoying obstacle. Hazzard thought about focusing, finding that implacable size in the hunks of rock and veins of leaves, but he had to keep the thudding pattern of feet in mind. Otherwise, he might get lost. These things happen when you don’t pay attention. Maria was sensing the lake down the ridge. She leaned that way, swinging on tiny, young trees to catch a peek at the first flashes of water through the openings in growth. She laughed. A small hard song rose fast and defused. The sky wasn’t resonating right. The timing was off. Headaches make the world seem this way, sometimes. James seemed to feel it in his temples. “Hey, does anyone have an aspirin?” he asked digging into his the white, hooded sweatshirt. It was cold, too. His hands had responded before he even thought about it. If he thought about it, he could feel his wallet bouncing in the back pocket of his corduroys. If he really put his senses to it, he could feel his hair moving. He checked his wallet, but it was still there. He brushed his thin, dirty-blonde hair back. Something was definitely wrong. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think to bring any,” Maria said. “Are you not feeling, well?” “I’m all right,” James said. “Oh,” Jen said apologetically. Jen smelled something funny, probably Hazzard. She could hear the clank of his bag over his wheezing. Every once in a while, he would let out a horrid smoker’s cough. It didn’t bother her, until he was right behind her. Somehow, the path had narrowed cutting around the top of the hillside. There would probably be a slight decline, and then they’d be at the lakeside. Single file, they continued with larger strides and stronger coughs from the back. She could smell the cigarettes, that ashy scent that came from the tray of butts in her car. There was another smell, too. She couldn’t place it. Maria spotted a woodchuck or something. She was calling them off the path to see. Hazzard held firm and swung his backpack off his shoulder. The strap wrapped around the headphones and popped the CD player out of his hand. There was a bang and a minute flurry of dry leaves. He scavenged the parts. The top was flopped onto the bottom. He could fix it if he had the pins, but he wasn’t even going to try looking. It had gotten so dark. Perhaps, sundown was on its way. That meant it was almost time to go home, anyway. He scooped the pieces up and unzipped his bag. There wasn’t much room in there for anything else, so something would have to go. Hazzard cracked a beer, took a sip, cracked another beer, and then slid the CD player into his bag. He could hear Maria and the others squawking about something or other. He was trying not to hear any names. The beer was warm, but familiar. He sighed and reclined across the trail. Time passed. Maria had reached the lake, and he was imagining her swimming and swinging sticks at the slight waves lazily crawling in. It had gotten late, somehow. The book bag served as a decent pillow. Cigarette smoke blanketed his resting spot. A few cans had turned up empty. A bottle had turned over many times. There was a sliver left, light brown, dingy and watery. He couldn’t remember whether it was “liquor before beer in the clear” or “liquor before beer, never sicker”. He always saved a little of both so he never had to decide. The liquor was wobbling in the glass. His hands had never been steady. He attributed the quaking to the cigarettes. They gave him the jitters when he had a craving. They gave him jitters when he smoked too many. The shaking was more or less a constant thing. Perhaps, it meant that he was maladjusted, some kind of quivering needle of an unknown scale, showing a precise measurement of a strange vibe. He had a smile through the notion that he might me an accident, indicative of a greater problem. He was a pre-casualty of the cigarette companies of America. He was an American health issue. He was an issue to the skies, maybe, just another outstretched limb of the earthly machine experiencing breakdown. He loved to think this way, especially when he could hear a group of people someplace below him, laughing. *** All the great religions have great heroes. A lot of these heroes are underdogs who prove valiant through discipline of some kind. Yet, just as important as the man who walks on water, the boy who slays the giant, and the man who flies across the middle east, is the person who takes up the pen, the plume, or the dirty, wet stone to records the events. Some religions were floating around in the air still, like the faint smell of a single clove cigarette settled in a couch well after the after-hours party is over. The right person can catch the right wind and possible sense religious essence. What follows is the hard part. The person must find a way to translate.
Copyright © 2001 Scott W. Hazzard |