The League of Berries and Laurels -- Ch. 6 (Pt. I)

** To Be Decommissioned on 3/1/24 **

Christmas Eve

Relates Francis’ transformation, the Kerrigan family’s Christmas Eve, fraught as it is, and the convergence of two opposing forces.

For a time, Francis was a radiant presence within the household, as he was within the folds of the family, and in the world at large, seeming ever relaxed, and often he joined his two younger brothers, and the twins, in the den to watch the cartoons of Japan. His cadet uniform, worn when he returned home and all were glad to see him, his father’s brooding anger the lone notable exception, has since been pressed and laundered to remove the salt stains about the hem. It hangs in the sparse closet of his sparse room. Despite its resplendence, it will not be donned until the time arrives for Francis to depart the frame of this house once more by morning’s light, looked upon with the same admiration as was afforded his arrival, for San Diego. His laughter was, for a time, more profound than his sibling’s, who are at an age that the cartoon was designed to amaze, rather than underwhelm. The villain’s continuous and awesome transformation into ever more refined and lethal forms struck him, in particular, as false; the alien fighter’s ability to meet these demands by finding ever more reason to fight, falser. It was later, as they were watching professional wrestling, a product that was forbidden in the house until Francis had control of the remote, and for which the twins were still led to their room, obligingly, one step at a time, that Ulie began to notice another aspect. Pale, agitated, and sweaty was this.

When he was in his early humor, their mother’s dotage was absolute, and, as sensitivity would note, any mention of San Diego or its causes were immediately supplanted with gay remembrances of times when the family was all together, or, failing that, talk was stopped up with every manner of meal. When the latter aspect produced itself, all was bitterness, scrutiny, and harassment.

In the first days, Francis would lead a frosty expedition, with Ulie and Eugene bedecked in their woolen bests, and Francis making use of his father’s spare coat, because he had outgrown any that were purchased when he still lived at home throughout the winters, and along came the twins, pulling along in a racing sled. The coat had been left on the front hall hook when their father returned with the family from mass, rather than be alone with Francis, who spent that hour reading.

“How did these stones appear here?” Ulie pondered to himself as they gathered stones to cast into the unruly lake. They stood upon the built up shelf of ice where the crashing waves, shooting upwards, proffered one more layer to the industrious air, and one more layer was added to the frozen mass. Ulie’s arms were laden with the best candidates the beach had to offer. “How do these drifts break down into circles with inner circles void, and whereupon do waves force their way up through the centers and surge, albeit not quite evenly, through their hollowed cores? Awe as much as waves forces shoots upward from these rings.” Ulie marveled at this, but around Francis, unlike their eldest brother, they are awed by his persona and carelessly speak their mind. His least indication of approval is formative. A cool response to their excitement about a part of their life is devastation. As such, Ulie does not pester Francis with his every amazed wonder at the world, but rather allows Eugene’s natural propensity to annoy ruin him in their brother’s eye, and proportionally esteem Ulie therefore.

Professional wrestling’s thunderous cracks, its dismal cavernous qualities, taking place in an area where sweating forms of victors loom over figures writing in agony from the latest blow, seems like possesses the languid and easy brother of those trips to the beach. One last gratuitous descent, the elbow leading in the fall, further punishes the writhing figure, although he was already all but subdued. The formal count follows in short order. Most grotesque of all is the way Francis, unaware that his brothers are more captivated by his horrible transformation than the predestined results of the bout, salivates upon his fingers, produces a small vial from his breast coat pocket, whereupon he rubs its contents, and then puts his saliva ridden and whitened fingers towards his lip. Beads of sweat fall down his contours and, as his mother walks in, he fidgets quickly to hid the substance again without finishing this latest iteration of his ritual.