He has ever been
selective about those days on which he visits, going neither on Christmas Day,
nor Mothers’ or Fathers’ Day, likewise Easter Sunday, or Sundays even, in
general; for him there is nothing worse than a crowded cemetery.
Wrapped in the drab
olive khaki of an outsize army jacket, fastened upon one lapel of which in memoriam floats a tiny colourful
replica of Linus van Pelt, and within which he seemed to move as if himself a
separate entity, the coat large enough to accommodate a latitude of difference
between the velocity of his forward momentum and its own, as if he were subject
to a pre-programmed exoskeleton at whose dictate his own skinny limbs were made
to move.
Likewise the
leather boots, themselves also of military origin, tightly-laced the better to
offer support that damn near useless ankle carried within, and these too
purchased imagining having lived these empty years a soldier of sorts himself.
Like a lopsided
crown, his black hair years now incongruous with those years as hang upon him,
while pendant from his ear the little silver skunk charm, worn again for the
first time in some time, necessitating its curved hook forced through the tight
flesh, his lobe to stiffen and pop with the application of what requisite
pressure.
But today, within
minutes of leaving the house for his mother’s grave, Brother Skunk knows this
to be the last time his crooked foot would afford him the walking there and
back, recognising too he had in fact been on some sort of countdown to this
inevitable event, each accomplished visit being one less left; and still now in
its irrefutable finality he feels himself almost taken by surprise.
In his refusal to
abandon the endeavour once begun, and finding himself now forced to amass all
available will to completing this one final defiant loop, he places the full
sum of his faith in the Bazooka walking cane carried tight in the translucent
grip of his knuckled fist, the skin of which stretched to the coloured texture
of newborn birdskull skin.
And thus, slowly
and stoically, he walks on underneath a sky utterly without colour, the
daylight too weak to muscle shade to any source.
He imagines his
every previous self ever to have made this exact same journey walking with him
now, picturing the variants in their age, their clothing and demeanour, the way
each iteration carries itself as if a solid space existed inbetween to keep
each equidistant from its other, the motion of each both dragging on that
behind and forcing on that before, his current tracks overlapping the oval of
all these previous in this now ultimate go-round, his available world having
simply shrunk commensurate with the diminishment of his every ambition and
those limits imposed upon him by his disability.
Such contemplation
sustains him a deal of his way, walking through minutes imperceptible with each
single step understood as one more less to take until such time as, shaking
with exertion and the vibrating cane forced to support that burden of his
deadweight brought to bear upon it, he must pause to gather breath, his free
hand held out trembling and expectant,
Skunk: Christ on my
left side. Christ on my left side. Christ on my left side.
until he can walk
on, as if subject to some outside momentum and ignorant of any real determinable
progress, a passive self likewise pushed and pulled regardless.
Letting himself in
through the graveyard’s lower gate, he acknowledges still another section of
the adjacent waste-ground in the process of its being annexed and landscaped to
accommodate the exponential increase of bodies, these geographical logistics of
whatever expanse as must be afforded whatever local dead, slowly passing by and
on between the stones until finally he arrives, exhausted, and with some
difficulty lowers himself to the damp meniscus of her grave; mirrored in the
black marble his kneeling reflection throws out of focus the paucity of her
meagre details (her name, the short-dated span of her life), his exhalations
coming shallow and quick, waiting for the adrenalin of such accumulant effort
to rinse itself on out through his blood, and dissipate.
Absent now the
walking stick and any expected activity, his empty hands simply war between
themselves, before next grabbing at the cut grass, a residual mass of it ending
clung to his palms and fingers, which he attempts in vain to clean off across
his thighs.
Come suddenly to
mind
ache1: Come on, name... you name me one
person who, if time was not a factor, would ever choose to visit a
cemetery in the rain.
Skunk (lifting his right hand): Present.
feeling the
oncoming evening’s dew as it seems to settle through him from the inside out.
Skunk: I can’t do this myself anymore, Mum, it’s got
beyond me.
rubbing at his
face, stray blades of grass left in the wake of his fingers.
Skunk: It’s... It’s,
this has... just got beyond me.
before, from next
to nowhere,
Skunk: “All my
byself.”
He tips his body’s
weight a degree to extricate the battered hipflask from out his coat pocket,
its lid circling off with the customary shriek. Swallowing, he feels his soul
warm with the whiskey’s insidious and irresistible narcotic promise of
something better somewhere else, his bloodstream coursing with the suggestion
of its power to elevate him where he might prefer, and soon too.
Skunk (quietly
singing, joining aloud partway through with the song heard in his head): “and I’ll
drink myself to death if I’m not careful”
his fingers tapping
a hollow tattoo from out the now empty flask
Skunk: “and I’m not
careful, not most of the time.”
The eventual effort
to rise again leaves him breathlessly off-balance and unsteady, so that with
the walking stick once more bearing his full weight he must stand still just a
little to re-establish his equilibrium, and having so done, sets off stoic on
the length of his return journey, heading home.
