Louis Maistros - The Sound of Building Coffins

(bliss)

If she remained somewhere in his heart, he was simply unaware. She was gone from him now, and he didn’t miss her. Her eyes forgotten, impossible white dress forgotten, Raleigh Rye forgotten, mysterious yellow stain forgotten, hand in a loose fist forgotten, promises made and rewards rendered: forgotten, forgotten, forgotten.

water

The water was a kind of false light-but not light-and, really, not even water. There was something in it. Something living in it.

the journey of

Streaks of reddish brown and tiny wisps of pink: jetted and swam, soared then dipped, shot then faltered.

threads through a rug

The pinkness was familiar to him, the familiarity a calming thing, the color of rebirth, the color of his babies. The babies he’d sent off on their way into the river, for second chances, for the tender mercy of childless mothers. Typhus didn’t know whether to feel joy or dread at the familiarity. He didn’t know whether to feel at all. There was nothing more to feel.

No matter.

As his eyes followed pink motion, a tinny music positioned itself at the back of his mind, the sound of a horn through a ghostly filter; not a physical sound. The water snuck to his waist-but he didn’t care, couldn’t pull his thoughts from the sound in his mind and the image in his eyes.

So beautiful. Haunting. Lovely. Final.

Bliss.

Troubled about my soul…

Sinking.

No matter .

As the water ( not water ) reached his chest, Typhus realized he no longer needed to bend at the hips in order to view (adore) the divine movement of pink. As orange gradually ( not gradually ) rose to the level of his throat, a fear of drowning failed to present itself. The thought of being submerged forever here was not a threatening thing.

Typhus Morningstar was, like his faithful friend the mosquito-fern, now perfectly still. His trusty burlap sack slipped from his fingers.

Typhus waited for the bag to float up to the top. It did not. It was lost. A nominal price for bliss, he thought. Goodbye, old friend.

A stray thought. Unwelcome.

Bliss = loss?

Now Typhus thought about loss. Thoughts of loss brought Lily to mind; promises he’d made her, the guilty fact that she’d always lived up to her end of the bargain without question, complaint, argument, or negotiation.

Unexpectedly, something like fear materialized in Typhus’ chest.

What had been pink and lovely had become vaguely dreadful. The gliding grace of alien music stretched and tore into a colorless wail.

Loss = death?

He could not do this thing to Lily, would not do this thing.

sinking

Paper Lily. The girl who would neither return his love nor break his heart. The girl he had promised to keep and protect.

Death = absence of pain?

Life =?

Just as the water reached his lips, Typhus threw his head back, pulled his arms above his head and frantically clutched at warm air.

pain?

A violent splash. Two heavy hands clasped Typhus just above the elbows, pulling his feet and legs up through cool, smooth mud, provoking a gaseous squeal from around his waist and below, the sound of resistant suction. Typhus looked down and saw his own muddy feet kicking above angry orange. Now thrown back and away from the lake of cool fire, his body smacked into a patch of moist saw grass. Typhus’ eyes blinked hard, then darted-searching for the owner of the saving hands. Finding: A black silhouette. Hearing:

“Typhus? Typhus, you all right, boy?”

It was a voice from his past-one he couldn’t quite place.

A hulking shadow of a man.

“Typhus?”

The face was a murk of swamp grays.

Fuzzy sparks of recognition triggered in Typhus’ mind as the phantom leaned closer. The man was kneeling. Dressed in ancient, filthy rags; nothing but the shoes on his feet offering any functionality. Typhus didn’t recognize the man, but he recognized the shoes. His father’s shoes.

The hair and beard of the phantom were long; copious grays braided and flecked with traces of green and brown. The beard stretched past his naked belly with weird purpose; little curved bumps in various shapes and sizes disrupting its thick mass from chin to tip, suggesting lumpy cells of concealed code. With a sleepy sense of dread, Typhus realized the anomalies in the phantom’s beard were, in fact, a series of woven pockets, and from their mouths gleamed the edges of mysterious implements.

“ Coco Robicheaux, ” Typhus whispered dimly.

The phantom’s shadow-saturated features ignited upwards from concern to amusement, his voice deepening with a rumble of low laughter; “ Temps moune connaite l’aute nans grand jou, nans nouite yeaux pas bisoen chandelle pou clairer yeaux !” The words were a Creole proverb his father had been fond of, the approximate meaning; “When a man knows another by broad daylight, he doesn’t need a candle to recognize him at night.” The phantom cleared his throat with a cough, managed to collect himself, then let his smile settle into a soft grin before switching back to English:

“Can’t go standing in the orange water, Typhus. It’ll sing to you first, then suck you down second if you ain’t careful.”

Typhus’s eyes struggled to decipher the man’s face. He knew this face. It was not his father, but it was someone his father had known.

“You okay, Typhus?”

He knew this face. He knew that laugh. He remembered. Now, he remembered.

“Typhus, say something. Say anything.”

Typhus meant to thank the phantom. Might have thanked him for all he’d done for his family over the years. Might have thanked him for saving his life just now. Might have thanked him for saving his life ten years previously. Might have apologized for having betrayed all past kindnesses by following him out into the bog on this night, for choosing not to respect the phantom’s simple and single condition of privacy.

Typhus said none of those things. But he did say:

“It ain’t right to wear the shoes of a man you kilt.”

Beauregard Church fell still and quiet; breath hushed, warmth drained from his eyes as pain and regret felt their way through the gray. His heavy head lulled, then dipped. He stood, looked at his feet; at the perfectly fitting shoes of Noonday Morningstar that warmed and protected them. Turned. Walked into darkness, crunching grass and twigs beneath the shoes. Shoes once belonging to a man whose back had held and bled from a family heirloom.

So many years ago.

away

Orange dimmed, its smooth color inaugurating a fade, then dying completely. The swamp: now black. The ground: uneventfully damp. Typhus closed his useless eyes. A thousand lonely swamp frogs warbled on.

He made his way home quickly. Despite the dark and without moon or stars to guide him, Typhus found in himself a near miraculous sense of direction. To find his way home, he simply followed the brightest thing in his troubled heart.

Lily, on a high shelf in the kitchen, was his North Star.

The phantom returned to the Morningstar home soon thereafter, on a night when mist stifled starlight and sky reached its richest shade of coal. Moist air corrupted the travel of sound, and so Typhus did not make note of footfalls.

That morning, the traditional bundle was found on the doorstep. No note was attached.

Malaria, always first to rise, joyfully carried the lumpy package through the threshold, gaily chirping, “A present from Father!” Typhus and Dropsy dragged themselves from straw mattresses, wiping sleep from dry eyes. Dropsy goosed a groggy smile from his lips, spoke in a cracked whisper:

“Well, what’s in it, Malaria? Dump it out already.”