La Cuadra » Here The Author Lies

Hodmimir’s Wood

Matthew Grimm — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:36:58 +0000

Photograph of the Author - Matthew Grimm

She visited me three times, maybe more, that soft ghost who smelled like violet, violet and fabric softener perfuming age-perfected jeans. She only came in when nobody else was there, seemingly always as my consciousness ebbed. She didn’t say anything at first, mostly, or if she did I didn’t hear it. I didn’t need to. Those times, in the quiet, in that kind of muted blue-but-never-quite-dark that hospital rooms get, some light always leaking in somewhere, when someone sat next to me and took my hand, I knew it was her by the touch and the smell, and she didn’t have to say anything.

What few words I remember her speaking I never saw her speak, I just remember the dark voice close, almost like telepathy, or an angel’s murmur, but I could feel the warm breath on my cheek and neck.

“Does it hurt?” she said.

The first time I couldn’t answer. Or I just didn’t.

—–

He visited after hours, maybe the last guy I expected to. He lived half-way across the country, at least last I heard — or, I should say, was there last I heard. A couple years after he’d mustered out, he sent a post-card from somewhere Redwood trees grew. He wrote in big letters, not bothering to be prosaic, and only a few words, how’s it going, do I ever see her, and, I remember verbatim, “Still can’t sleep.” When he’d come home, he hadn’t stayed long. He’d wound up months in the V.A., entered a study, then left when they told him that the thing wrong with him didn’t exist and he should sign a paper waiving liability on the part of the government. He signed nothing. He figured out that if climbed into the car and rode out, even for just a couple days, it made things better. The movement, the lack of hereness, somehow valved the well of stress, or agita, over what to do here, how to vest anything in here, and his symptoms eased. So he figured here didn’t help much, and he loaded up and beat it. He didn’t make a whole thing out of it, just wasn’t there one day.

Now and then he sent me dog-eared paperbacks, no return address. The books never said anything about coming back.

But here he was, or his words anyway, drifting up from my left, and back, somewhere near the window. His voice rustled with too many cigarettes — strange, though, I couldn’t smell them — an old man’s voice, even though he wasn’t, even though we both were, maybe more than we could ever have imagined.

The first couple nights I only become aware of his presence when he started talking, and then only barely, the fucking ninja. I got the feeling he wanted not to tell me the stories so much as to insinuate them in my subconscious. He would love like hell to boast such a skill.

He said:

Odin came to the brook, and in his coming to the brook, everything changed, even though everything remained as it would always be.

I know, we don’t think of gods aging, or gods evolving, but these were the stupid anthropomorphic gods of stupid people not yet arrogant enough to shove their stupid gods down our throats. While anymore we get myth shoved down our throats as “science,” the old shit, we only get pieces of the narrative because Christians tended to spread their conspicuous interpretation of enlightenment by burning libraries. But this is the Odin you don’t know, when he was still a rambling, shambling bad motherfucker. Still thought war (war being his thing) was this glorious undertaking, scent of blood, noble berserker boo-yahs, like Klingons, like we teach our young men and women, pound it up their asses along with trifolded flags. That was pre-enlightenment Odin, the John Wayne of a simpler time, except not a posturing, draft-dodging tool of state propaganda.

So anyway, Odin wants the skinny on his glorious battles to come. So he goes to Mimir, the spring of poetry and wisdom, which lies at the foot of the World Tree, there to wet his whistle with a draft of enlightenment. But enlightenment ain’t cheap, Spanky. The guardian of the well tells him he can drink if — always the big ‘if’ — if he first casts something vital of himself into the water. So Odin, mighty fucking warrior, snorts and spits and tears out his fucking eye and tosses it into the brook. And he takes his drink. And in a flash, he sees Ragnarok.

Here The Author Lies – The Ballad of Vodka Rox

Kevin Petrie — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:20:50 +0000

Smoke hung in the bar and wafted around between the clustered, colored lights like an addictive fog. David watched. It was pleasing. Other than that things were turning out pretty shit.

He sat and pondered the call he had received an hour earlier. Rox. It had been almost four months since he had heard anything from the sociopathic bastard. He stared at his still full beer and tried to piece the thing together, clearly a futile task. Vodka Rox was jabbering and raving on the other end of a scratchy line from God-knows-not-where about ‘mammal sovereignty’ and the ‘amphibious threat from our excessively coddled and protected wetlands’. David had agreed to meet him out of sheer curiosity. Now, after a forty-five minute drive to a shithole bar with warm beer and slanted stools only to find out that the crazy asshole was late, yet again. He was kicking the cat in himself and hoping his curiosity wouldn’t kill him. It easily could considering the man he had come to meet.

Vodka Rox. Everyone agreed it wasn’t his real name. How could it be? What parent would willingly bequeath such a burden upon their child? A moniker virtually guaranteed to breed alcoholism? But if not a given name, then how was the alias acquired? The man only drank whiskey. And that always neat. Apart from a taste for malted barley, very little was known about him. Where he came from, why he constantly employed exotic accents and changed his signature with every use. What criminal record he might be running from? All that remained a mystery.

David looked up and surveyed his surroundings: Three greasy old men sat at the bar with the dull eyes and bored postures of patrons who know their place in this world down to a specific stool in a specific shithole bar. The bartender, even greasier than the customers, stared blankly at a basketball game on a small, corner-mounted screen in front of a set of shelves half-full of half-full bottles half-covered in dust. There were three tables besides his own, which he had chosen for its obscurity in the far corner as well as for its thick patina of mites and flotsam, which suggested that no one had used it in weeks and it was therefore most likely not contaminated with ringworm or herpes or some other malady common to the type of people who frequented dives like this.

He had lost himself in his ruminations when the rusted-rat squeak of the door brought him back. There, in the doorway, wearing jodhpurs, a scarf, heavy black boots, leather gloves, and aviator goggles, splattered from head to toe with a brown, creamy looking substance, was the man, the legend, the utterly insane imbecile, Vodka Rox. He surveyed the room, spotted David, walked towards the corner table, sat down heavily and said, “Where’s my whiskey?”

David could only stare. He took a gulp of his beer and stared some more.

Rox pivoted in his chair. “Barhop! A whiskey! You forgot my whiskey!” He turned back. “You did order me one, yes? That scummy shit just forgot about it. I thought so.” The bartender had almost managed to tear his concentration from the static on the screen when Vodka spoke up again, louder this time. “Ah never mind about it ya scummy shit! Just admit you forgot, it’s alright. I’ll even come to the bar for it. I expect a good pour though, you god damned incompetent!” He began to rise just as David found his voice.

“What the hell are you wearing? Did you buy a motorcycle? Christ that’s all you need is…”

“No no no. I came in the Volvo. These are my swamp clothes. For the swamp.”

“Jodhpurs and riding goggles? How are those swamp clothes, you crazy fu…”

“Look man! It doesn’t matter anymore! I was mistaken in my identification of the nature of this particular threat! We’re not going to a swamp! Not anymore! It would be pointless! Hang on, let me get my whiskey.” He wheeled toward the bar, just in time to miss the bartender spitting into his glass.

David did his best to listen in during the exchange at the bar. “What! TIP YOU!? He ordered the drink didn’t he? YOU…FORGOT it! There was a pause during which bartender muttered something inaudible. “OH! You fuck! I know he ordered the drink! He told me he did!” The bartender whispered something in his ear. Vodka glanced back and nodded to me, then to the bartender and returned to the table. “Look, I’m sorry but it’s going to have to go on you’re tab. And he’s putting an extra 20 bucks on there too for something or other. Not kicking us out, I think.”

Here The Author Lies – The Windowsill

Paul Staley — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:01:38 +0000

Morning is their favorite time together. It is the only time of day when the east-facing window gets direct sunlight and the fresh upslope wind blows from the city below, entwining their foliage in an intimate wind dance. Juan, a spider plant and Rafael, an ornamental palm, are friends and have been growing together on the same windowsill since they were seedlings.

Their place of birth is the kitchen window in a makeshift apartment that was built atop the roof of the Juarez family’s home on Fortune Hill, overlooking the city of Oaxaca in Southern Mexico. The Juarez family rents this spare room to an Old Norwegian expatriate named Anders. It is Anders who takes care of Juan and Rafael.

Every morning the old man has the same routine. He gets up an hour after the sun rises and turns on his radio. The Latin beat of the Cumbia compliments the two friends in their morning dance. The plants enjoy the rich smell of coffee wafting up as Anders brews it right below their windowsill. Anders pours a little water into both of their pots whispering the same, reassuring words of encouragement every morning

“Growing so quickly. Growing so strong.”

Then, still in his underpants, the old man moves out into the sun to enjoy his coffee, a cigarette and the rooftop view of Oaxaca. Following this ritual of sunshine, caffeine and nicotine, Anders gets dressed, brushes his teeth, picks up his handmade Oaxacan briefcase and heads to the Zócalo, the town square. There, in the shade of Laurel trees, the retired professor sits at the same café each morning. And each morning musicians playing the marimba circulate from café to café for tourists.

While dipping fresh bread into Oaxacan hot chocolate he delves into D.H. Lawrence or El Pais, which, according to Anders, is the only good newspaper in town. His head is buried in his readings; he only looks up when a beautiful Mexican woman walks by.

While Anders is in the Zócalo the two plants are left to themselves on their peaceful sill. Often the old friends share long conversations. At times they just enjoy each other’s company, mutually listening to the sounds of Southern Mexico rising from the city below. They hear the bells ringing from the cathedrals and the man selling water, who yells:

“Aguaaaaa, hay Aguaaaa.”

They are careful to listen for the whistling of the bottlerockets that go off throughout the day and into the night because they are always followed by rude explosions that shock the friends to their roots. They hear the roar of buses heading up Crespo Street spewing noxious diesel fumes.

This was life as they knew it – and they were fully content until the day they awoke to see the new poster on the kitchen wall.

It was a painting by Monet that Anders must have put up during the night when the friends were sleeping. It was a work of art that portrayed a garden so lush it was as if plants were the only living creatures on earth. The old friends were awestruck.

After some time Rafael said to Juan,

“My friend all we really know is this windowsill.”

Juan thought about this as his foliage shivered in the wind.

—–

Paul Staley is a traveling writer, currently living in Oaxaca. He passed through Antigua a few months back, drank some Mezcal and felt at home. He graciously submitted this story and we hope to see more of both him and his writing very soon.