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Hey kids, this week I decided to show you one of the many stories
that will be in my upcoming collection of short stories that'll be
available on Amazon.com
in about three months. It's very serious, so if you're hoping to
read something funny, you're going to have to
read something else.
I would really appreciate any feedback.
Thank you,
Nick
Gaudio
The Terrain's Tide
The Appalachian mountains are the curves of a woman's body: small,
round, withdrawing when not present… the embodiment of this, my
third day without a smoke. A half-mile away, the faint sounds of
cars sloshing and slurring by are the drawn-out, discordant strikes
of industrial piano keys that coo at inopportune times.
Now,
for the first time in four years, I genuinely miss my wife.
"I've known that there is something that needs done… something like
poetic dignity in bodily punishment."
Here, on the top of
deadpan Haystack mountain, I sit and look down into the shallow
valley where Cumberland, Maryland lies heavy and fog-ridden. Only
the Blue Bridge—a dirty, archaic bridge—is visible now that the
clouds have laid their smooth claws into the area; even so, the
sky-blue steel bars are barely existent.
I make out a plot
of land around it, in West Virginia; a few ramshackle houses
overlook the Potomac River. They sit with objectionable unrest.
Shingles on their rooftops dangle and split, bend up toward the
gold-reflecting clouds of the Western Maryland sunset. Each facade
of these river-town houses a different gradient of white siding and
locomotive dirt.
With the pen touching blank paper and most
importantly, not moving, I understand that by and by, the life of a
man scorned is
the life best suited for writing. And so, that's what I do here:
reprising myself through time alone with a pen. By improving my
trade, I thereby improve myself. My friends call it writer's
martyrdom; I call it perfection by self-reproach.
To put use
to the pen, I begin by thinking of all the things I've never done
and by all means, should've by now. I realize that I've never tossed
a football. That I've never sang karaoke or been brave enough to
curse in public. But most importantly, I remember an idea that's
been haunting me since an early age:
I've never seen the ocean. In pictures, I've viewed it, of
course: waves crashing upon the bright, sandy beaches with bottles
of Corona loftily held by attractive women or sun-tanned children
building castles like Jimi Hendrix spoke of some thirty years ago.
Still, my bare feet have never dug deep into the soft particles, my
hair has never smelled of salt. I've never surfed, nor have I made
love there.
Depressing as it would seem, now that I remember
my own faults, it's a great deal more satisfying to understand why
Lindsay left me. But more significantly, in seeing my own
transgressions, I realize that when I leave this place—this
decrepit, manufacturing city—that my slate would be again blank. But
to truly refresh my soul, I would need to loosen it from the bonds
of this flawed body.
These flawed hands! I've been writing
with these hands! Failing to reach those I wish to speak to.
I've known that there is something that needs done… something like
poetic dignity in bodily punishment: death by my own negligence,
inexperience; passing through unknown to achieve the even more
significant unknown. Heaven, hell, purgatory, eternal rest,
nonentity. Each conclusion a possibility, a prospect, an ending to
corporeal pain and a beginning of a raw newness. In order to
end my life properly, I would begin by walking into the ocean as
far as I could.
Of course, I realized that my ideas must be kept secret. A dubious
many—friends, family—would prevent me from my task through lecture
or perhaps even physical restraint. Nevertheless, any obstacle on
this journey could surely be overcome. Right?
I stand up and
peer over the cliff I'm standing on—jagged rocks and a few evergreen
trees planted diagonally on the way trail off to a place the locals
call “the Narrows.” There, a few hundred years ago, a Native
American princess fell from the cliffs with her fiancée, an
Englishman, as both would be separated had not they died together
there.
This somehow implies to me that the simple life is
better, that my feet are not capable of the distance of a few
hundred miles. And then, to begin walking with no planned direction
through these unforgivable forests? That's another story altogether.
Discouraged, I sit again; but, this time, the pen moves. I'll write,
I think, and in no time I begin:
“Guilded Sun Mistress,” I
write, “if you were simply here, my hand would hang its gauzy, white
summer-sheet to dry in your rays—brighter than insanity—but this is
winter and my sky shuffles me to the sodden darkness of a basement &
I wait for you, frozen.
“(The stove melts the snow clear
here and green sparks in my eyes to resemble yours.)
“But
heat is thin; there is no solace in other source. Though in
spring—the second time I'll see you shining— I'll toss my ax into a
pile of dead leaves—my pen will fit into hand. And you—you'll be
running, dripping from spider webs, warming wind and second; or you
will be on me, quietly asking for the most simple justice: a stare
into your eclipse; jealousy of its moon.”
Satisfied, though
inadequately, I scribble the best title that comes to me, “Heat
Metaphor,” and put the pen down on a damp pile of leaves. I look up.
The sun, my muse, has now set over the mountains completely.
Ripping the paper from its small, black notebook, I tuck it into my
shirt's chest pocket and stand again on the edge of the cliff. A
hard wind passes and I notice the fog that had consumed the city has
now gained in strength and crept up the mountainside to my feet. I
stand here until night, until my socks are wet, until my legs beat
pain in innocuous rhythm.
The wind comes again, slightly, in
pace with the moon as it rises. The terrain's tide, I think,
and a smile comes against my will.
Then, my body turns, I
face the sky and lean backwards, catching myself with hundreds of
feet of air above the Narrows. The trees speed to me, the rocks
also. Above, my last conscious scene: a break in the gray-navy
clouds is filled with darker smoke—a mushroom cloud from
Cumberland's
last surviving power plant rises into the night. It covers the
moon's glow with its murky, resentful smoke.
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