Tragedy Of Crows: Chapter 1 (3) Glen O’Hare of Trenton, NJ smelled something funny once after all his beer-tipping buddies went home. He thought it was the stove or a clove cigarette, but before he could check, he found himself scribbling iambic pentameter on a Burger King napkin with a mechanical pencil. Running out of lead in the middle of a complicated creation myth, Glen searched the house for something else to write with. At about this time, the Genny Cream Ale caught up to him. While Glen slept through his eight-thirty sociology class, his roommate Sarah cleaned up the place, all the while complaining about the frequency and volume of parties held at their residence. Sarah threw out the first chapter and a half of the bible of Hundism, a religion that had been struggling to be born for over three centuries. This sort of thing happens a lot. While some religions never make it past this stage, others thrive. These thriving religions respect the difficult process through which a religion takes shape in earthly language. Thus, a strong institution like Heaven has learned to be very generous when it comes to the lives of budding writers. With the proper tutelage, several Glen O’Hares can be brought to create many additional stories and important commentary regarding God and the manifestations of his presence on earth. By offering a few boosts to these would-be religious translators, the Heavens can not only help add amendments to previous texts, but they can assure that texts by competing religions never get past scrawls on napkins. The Heavens, the God and Angels version, had a pretty strong infrastructure, a top-notch records department, and a central intelligence agency that makes the spies of first world countries seem like children peeking out of a tree house. Somewhere, the fate of the great poet of the twenty-first century was being passed back and forth from one record keeper to another in some hushed, cloudy camber in Heaven. Some decisive voice, middle management to the great voice, was running through the methods of solicitation for the literary minds on the rise. The fresh, empowered minds of the highest order may get to hear God speak a few words, never in person, though. These words were carefully picked long ago, remained entombed in a flustered incongruous echo in the skies, only to fall down at the exact moment dictated by the great engines of the heavens. It was a lot like voice mail. The secondary, but still sufficient poetical geniuses may get taken out to dinner by a real life angel free of charge. Other less sufficient poetical perspectives received letters from “God” that were actually issued by a few lower level Seraphim with a mailing list and a holy rubber stamper. Others still, got the tour. It’s sort of a company walk-through, and Heaven and Hell, being bound by the same set of beliefs, work in conjunction to allow for these tours to take place. More accurately put, Heaven sends out tours, and Hell knows better than to mess with them. Satan knew damn well that clever, conniving and dastardly, deceit were more becoming of his station than open terrorism. Besides, Hell enjoyed in the exposure of the tours. It increased morale amongst the demons if they could appear leering and vile to the fresh meat that wandered in. Others, the tour guides specifically, had noted problems with the idea of tours. Virgil had agreed to give tours after he found death a little too boring for his tastes. He thought it would be a seasonal thing. He might give a few tours, help foster budding genius, get to know the new kids in town, and impart some great wisdom here and there. Eventually, he’d quit, relax, and talk quietly to the dead. It was great publicity. Some had attributed their greatest works to his guidance. Others denied up and down that any religious experience had ever occurred. The newer writers were the most fond of saying things like, “I just sat down and wrote” or “I was drunk one night and bang, there it was.” It had been a long time since he had been given the respect he deserved. Still, he kept checking the schedules, awaiting angelic voices, invoices actually, that would tell him who to pick up where and when. Perhaps, he was waiting for someone specific, some great genius to revive his name complete with all the added weight of years of underworld experience. Judging from the souls that had taken the tour recently, it was obvious to Virgil that Heaven wasn’t feeding him the serious candidates for greatness anymore. Virgil cursed some more recently deceased poets for their supposed “ability to relate” to the new upstart writers of the current times. Surely, one of the young bucks had usurped him from his former position as the most noted tour guide. Virgil knew this when they started giving him commercial artists and editorialist to guide through Heaven and Hell. Still, Virgil had a small hope. Even the smallest hope, albeit false, was a fleck of gold in the sightless zones of Hell. After Heaven sent down instructions for yet another pickup, Virgil began the walk from his home in Hell to the earth. He had to know exactly where to go. The instructions must be precise, so sharply defined, in fact, that a divine force must impart them. Otherwise, there is no hope of escaping Hell and reemerging on earth. Virgil knew his way, but it made his stomach uneasy. He always tried to remind himself that he didn’t really have a stomach anymore, but that didn’t ease the ill feelings. The names, the place, the time, all throbbed in his consciousness. His divine mission blared within him like a loud television set busting all patterns of the mind in mid-thought. He could do nothing but think the destination and transcend. If he tried not to think about it, he might be late, and they might never ask him to guide a tour again. So what if these names, this place, and this time seemed less than promising. At least he had the chance to find out. He sighed and took on his task. Perhaps, this tiny crew of English-only speakers may have a semi-decent sonnet between them. Perhaps, one of them had a decent story. Maybe, they might recall his name with a few letters on the bottom of a page: For Virgil. Even in English, that sounded good. He ignored his stomach and thought much harder about the time and place of his arrival, he thought about a lake by a hillside. Random bits of the destination revealed themselves. He could sense a young man with a strange brown hat and a nasal voice. He could sense brown legs gleefully, sweeping the meniscus of a faintly present wave. Smiling, he ascended. A phantom stomach pain emerged every so often, though. And he could sense…. smoke… cancerous, filthy smoke. *** Hazzard let it trickle out of his mouth, and then inhaled it through his nose. *** One fine morning, Uriel decided that he might be in love. The ‘who’ was left up in the air, and the ‘why’ would surely follow. Candidates didn’t present themselves all too often. There were some sweet, fine days with distant sunlight putting the corners of his cloud sector into a silvery glistering. That was all right, but those spectacles didn’t have near the level of endurance he was looking for. He needed a parallel. Some fine line, a singular ray, something to reflect or project a laser against at such an obscure frequency no one else could see it. Of course, she wouldn’t see it, either. Just him. He would create it, for her, in spite of everything else, secretly. Yet, no specific ‘her’ had risen above the rest. Or rather, no foundation seemed stable enough to build upon. Uriel was disappointed in his fellow angels. While there weren’t male and female angels, there were definitely masculine and feminine angels. A few strongly androgynous angels were present, but they blabbed on and on about “wildly, altering the conventions of reality” through bold fashion statements and other radical, artsy things. Uriel found it a little funny that strong-willed go-getters like Michael never once questioned their gender. Michael’s honor and grace was probably above gender. Probably. But Uriel wondered if Michael hadn’t just assumed himself masculine and built his whole mystique around that. Uriel never had time to try to embody masculinity or femininity. He was busy thinking and observing. When Heaven was still in its infancy, Uriel wasn’t sure what job to apply for. He watched everyone else and made a move at the last minute. Uriel climbed up high and turned his eyes inward towards the growing engine of Heaven. An archangel pointed to him and commented on his intense observational skills. It seemed only natural that Uriel would be just as attentive staring in the opposite direction. They gave him a badge and a schedule, and pointed over the edge to all that he must watch over. He watched. His mind wandered. And the rest can be read in much more reputable literature. He found his mind moving back to the distinctly feminine angels. Still, they were not all that impressive. Physically, they possessed an immeasurable degree of elegance and a dauntless emotional energy. No one was sad or happy stronger or longer than an angel, it seemed. And for some implacable reason, Uriel felt jealousy. He knew it was jealousy. He knew it was the same thing that made him work slower whenever someone mentioned glorious Michael and his miraculous deeds. Uriel knew he’d rather have a sword than the letter opener, just like in the old days, but he understood that the system worked. Things remained in order. Accidents did not and could not happen. Thus, Uriel knew for certain that the burning in his chest was jealousy, and that it was bad. And it might have been a little bit of hatred, too. And then it was worse. He had to get a handle on it somehow. And he thought about love as the perfect antithesis to that general burn. If he felt a general burn, why not a specific love to put everything in balance? Yet, Uriel could not find an angel to suit his needs. They were all too general, not a single one of the lot seemed specific about anything. Uriel stared a long time at each angel, until his or her sex became apparent. There was a dividing line, uncut, like a perforation upon their species. He saw breasts. Earth bound creatures, although dense to the wonders of the universe and numb to the music of the spheres, were much more in touch with their sexuality. Thus, a man on earth would recognize exposed breasts with a variety of gestures, regional slang terminology, and perhaps, a’hootin’ and a’hollerin’. This sort of thing had only been tested once, on accident, when an extremely careless angel, Leanne, was watching over a soul during standard guardian angel procedure. The soul belonged to a Mrs. Pulmer, a bank teller at First National in Greece, NY. After staying up all night listening to her husband’s great idea for a book he would never finish, she found herself too tired to properly count. She made three or four major mistakes that day ruining her otherwise perfect career. If there is one thing angels like, it’s consistency. Thus, a guardian angel may choose to intervene, provided they get the green light from a sub-committee. This sub-committee processes requests of all nature, and the process, although marred with bureaucracy takes only a moment since the collective consciousness of the angels can catalogue and process the whole of human thought in a mere fifteen seconds, twelve seconds if the solar winds die down. This process runs slow, however, when the guardian angel concentrates on any one thing too hard. Leanne was planning an elaborate way to transfer loose change and leftover dollars from laundry machines to the pockets of those individuals that Mrs. Pulmer shortchanged by accident. The process was a bit too elaborate, but Leanne liked to show off when she could. The problem was that Leanne’s zeal caused her to forget about concealing herself. A greeter at a nearby Walmart had just entered the bank to cash his paycheck. Although he had the largest reported collection of pornography in the eastern states, he would never be able to shake the strange, alluring image of dark, curls hooking around angelic breasts. Nothing he had ever seen before or since compared to that image. It was less than a second before Leanne regained control, and afterward the greeter could never quite place where he had seen the image. Somehow, it just got there. He remembered Mrs. Pulmer for some reason, and three years later they were married. Although the event was baffling, it had actually been scripted well in advance. Leanne didn’t know, but she realized if she had, it probably wouldn’t have worked out. Thus, she was humbled by the genius of the system, and she continued vowing never to show off or show off ever again. Uriel had heard this story in the break room. He hated it. No one knew Leanne. No one knew if she was real. Eventually, the hatred for the story turned into a hatred for her, reaching a peak point whenever he recalled the man drooling on his paycheck over the dark hair upon her curves. Uriel decided that it must be a woman, and he must know she is a woman. And he would love it purely, bleating out the awkward feeling he felt in his stomach every time he imagined Leanne’s breasts. Of course, Uriel’s thoughts on the matter were slow, centuries long, building in the background of every simple thought blaring in the foreground of his mind. For every ten billion times he had reminded himself to pay close attention, there was one time when the breasts would flash into his recollection. For an angel, this meant he was obsessed, he was a dreamer, and he had a definite problem. And no one could find out. Not twice in an existence. Uriel would not allow that. The love would be the purifying answer and the secret fix to the breakdown building in the background. So, Uriel waited. And he saw a great many angels, so many degrees of flawless. Nothing specific stuck. None seemed careless at all. A simple mistake would have sent the engines of his secret love turning. A single fall, a minor trip of the tongue, something out of line with absolute perfection could be the beacon he was looking for. Yet, no such thing seemed to be on the rise. He saw some women of the higher order, learning and repeating the deepest music of the planet. In their spare time, they gossiped, laughed, and sent coy smiles to the highest soldier that swirled above. They would recall all the great victories of Michael. Uriel tuned out the voices first, and then the faces. Finally, the breast disappeared, too. He was about to give up entirely when… “Umm,” she said. “This isn’t right is it?” It was a voice from above. Not too far above, though. Uriel was in one of the lower offices, and she wasn’t asking him. She wasn’t asking anybody, really, but it was a distinctly different type of music than anything Uriel had ever heard from the other angels. It didn’t fit. And it wasn’t glazed over easily or sitting idle waiting for pickup somewhere later in a great elusive story. No, Uriel was sure that she had coughed. It was inappropriate. Angels did not cough, sneeze, or fall down, unless it was to change the course of history for a higher purpose. They were catalysts, and this phrase was unique in that it popped out and disappeared. The speaker returned to sound becoming of her position in the spheres. Her music returned to the sounds surrounding her, but Uriel had her pin-pointed. Once, an archangel had noticed that Uriel had tremendous observational skills. She was working in the Department of Inspirational Admissions five hundred miles up, two over, third cloud pocket on the left in the upper level of the record hall. And he would have to go there, just to see her and attain the raw materials necessary to build his healthy obsession. He invented a story, and that story took several years. Actually, Uriel had hundreds of stories, and he imagined their implications in full, but he was never completely satisfied. Finally, he vowed to take the one that occurred on the next full moon over Greece, NY. He had his plan. He marched up to the hall of records, past blaring sheets of marble bathed in starlight. He walked beyond columns, passing by so much overhead and so little beneath. Uriel did not consider that below the hard floor of the record hall was an immeasurable distance and a tiny speck of enormous consequence. He forgot about the earth entirely, and the unnerving height of the record hall caused him to forget the plan as well. He had that habit of forgetting things. He kept walking, imagining what she’d look like, whether or not she’d have long, dark curls. Arriving late in the workday, he hoped to catch her leaving her office. He overestimated his own speed and arrived just as the light of angels started to die down in the corridors of the higher level. It was just about time for shift change. And if he didn’t hurry, she would surely be gone, back to some collective task, to contribute, to sing along, to travel any distance away from the origin of that misspoken sentence. He burst through the clouds shrouding her office. Behind a desk, wedged tight to the wall was a tiny form, scrupulously filing away invoices, translating, and murmuring sound from cabinet to cabinet. She took no notice of him. She was working very hard, but too hard. Uriel knew the common pace of work. He knew it by the grumbling given when he took too long to punch his time card. She was too fast, though, rushing, almost as if trying to race the tide of eternity. Then, Uriel realized that it wasn’t her that was different. It was what she had seen. Something in those files had startled her, and she dreaded to look up at him for fear it would slow her down and the memory of that incident might occur to her again. “I know,” he said. And she stopped. That laser shot out parallel to her. He noticed sex, long arms, long fingers, long, dark hair. Only her wings seemed out of place. “Have you come to fix it?” she asked. “Yes,” he said. She revealed the file to him, a faint earthly set of sound, heat, and light. It was a vague assembly of flesh. She had to concentrate deeply to amplify it for him. Uriel didn’t need the amplification. After a bit of thought, he could hear it loudly, not just through the record, but also deep below him on that fleck of consequence far beneath the record hall. Somewhere on earth, there was an irregularity… a horrible, building irregularity. It was no strange elegance. It was no expected deviation from current form. Someone had been asleep at the wheel, and the car had finally crashed. The bang was tiny, and the sound was in its infancy. A single tremor had passed upward, finally reaching the record hall. She must have realized a conflict. She must have realized a system fault, questioned, wondered, and then continued onward. “What is it?” he asked, but he knew. He had known since those days so long ago when he was alone in the record hall processing data forms, hearing and singing through as part of the chorus of perfect work. He was back there, at last. They had found the problem, his wonderful little problem. “Hazzard,” she said. *** It was late in the evening when Virgil arrived at the earthly end of the deep woods. The Hartwick College crew was scheduled to be lost any minute. Maria had felt an inexplicable desire to hike onward from the lake. This inexplicable desire was a lot like a pager going off in the soul. The others followed similar signals. Hazzard followed the flutter of the last of their T-shirts. That was about all he could see clearly. He had stumbled to the lakeside with a list of things to call Maria. He was completely convinced that this list was informative and intelligent enough to thrash her happy state to pieces. Unfortunately, Hazzard was also convinced that this list was legible. When he arrived at the dock and attempted to reread his work, he found it impossible to translate the squiggles. Finally, he settled for crooking his finger at her and grunting before picking up a piece of shale and tossing it vengefully into the water with a bitter resounding plop. Maria laughed. “No, no,” she said picking up a flat rock. “It’s like this.” The rock skipped four times before it slipped into the water. Hazzard watched, grunted again, and tossed his notebook into the water. He thought he saw something in her expression change. As ink passed into water erasure, he could see something quivering oddly in her eyes, the beginnings of change, perhaps. That’s when the internal clock went off, and she turned away from Hazzard’s falling book to a distant pocket of darkness. The others followed without suggestion. None thought it was odd that no words were spoken. Hazzard couldn’t exactly tell. He watched the notebook fall. “If that wasn’t enough…,” he began thinking aloud. She was escaping him, though, and he had to turn and follow. The thought tapered off into a mutter that didn’t even make sense to him. Hazzard kept after them persistently. They were not waiting. He could afford no breaks, moving while coughing. No cigarettes could be lit. He couldn’t charge back to the hilltop where he’d left his book bag. He was at the mercy of their pace. Hazzard was vocal about it, but no one could hear it beneath the wheezing. He swore through it, though. “Gawd…thuhcking… damnhit…. Hesus… thuhcking… Chishis…” Each step forward was a rejection to a climbing sleep. Hazzard felt rising dreams, pushing out the tail of the white, T-shirt before him. He thought it was Steve’s shirt, and he couldn’t remember if he had come to the lake with a Steve or not. Every thought spiraled out into a visual inquisition of something completely unrelated to his physical motions. The darkness was coming onto him like anesthetic. It could have been simple to fall back a few feet, find a soft patch, and curl up for a few hours. He had almost had her, and he couldn’t stop. He ignored the music of their steps. He chased the last set of thuds, ignoring its place in an established set of rhythms. Surely, they would stop somewhere, and when they did, Hazzard would get to her and attain an explanation for their sudden expedition. Perhaps, he would find out that he had her on the run. This thought was comforting enough to aid his ascent and descent over several hills. Maria wasn’t thinking about him. It was as if she had never known him. Her thoughts were not only elsewhere, they were opposite to recollection of him. He was from back there at the lake, and everything was ahead. She knew it, a knowledge that was solid beneath a crust of fear. The darkness was rising and moonlight was becoming inevitable. It had only seemed like a few minutes ago when she had noticed the pale etching of the moon upon the mostly blue theme of the day. The clouds folded in. Gray brothers of the earlier day’s fluffy accessories arrived ushering in a night like she had never seen before. She knew not to be afraid, before she realized she was shaking. She knew about the stranger before anyone saw or heard him. Before he guessed they were being pulled, Hazzard knew about the white shirt trying to wave goodbye. He did not let it. Instead, he swore louder, stepped harder, and fought to keep the pace. Hazzard laughed at the disappearing troupe. He rushed forward to gain some ground, spitting out a “jehesus..mothur..thuckher” on his way. He reached into the inner pocket of his leather jacket and grabbed up a cigarette. With a Pall Mall leading the way, Hazzard blazed forward at the faintly present sound of marching. Hazzard was all set to get lost. He had a few interesting fantasies turning in his head, too. He might stay out there, eating acorns and seedpods. Maybe, he’d travel to a roadside and find a nice trucker to take him to California. He could be presumed dead for a while. Dogs would sniff the woods. That all seemed possible and interesting. He was hoping for one of those things when he finally lost sight of the group. He wasn’t expecting to find a mountain, and it pissed him off.
Copyright © 2001 Scott W. Hazzard |