The League of Berries & Laurels: Book the First - First Chapter (Pt. IV)
Continued from:
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“I’ll say,” the friend explains as he approaches the coffee table and judiciously pops two, and then three, of the marshmallows into the level of his chocolate. “If it were any bitterer, I swear my nose would have shattered into pieces, or popped clean off in one piece, so very bitter it was.” With this indelicate gulp from the ornate finery, where they see birds inherit bands of one another’s beaks along the outer surface, and small checks of color display faster, smaller birds, the addition of marshmallows jumps up into a humming countenance. “Now this is what I call society, Mr. Kerrigan.”
“Grandpa, who are all these? Boy, are they a trip?” Ulie contorts to see if they see where he points.
“I’m glad you ask. Look closely there, do you see a lad in the middle row, the one who very stoically, and with some pride, looks out with a lot of lollard jesters at my flanks?” J.J. runs and slides on corduroy, back into place affront the framed photograph.
“I don’t know; it’s all in black and white.”
“Look there, at the one with the peaky felt hat just askew.” Focus then takes over where the most original contours of a face begin to appear friendlier and more familiar to the exclusion of every face else. They turn with the frame to the old man, now almost a youth again, such is the moment they share in recognition, and the two young ones shout.
“It’s you!”
“That it is. Never did I share a happier company than with these friends of mine.”
“Is this taken where I think, in the park?”
“Indeed, atop the theatre in the park where the cannon and the flagpole are.”
“I passed through today even, on the way over.” Both the friends look to one another, amazed. Both of them back away, and plop down, sat before their bard, a grandpa but a moment hence, now to listen to the tale.
The general spirit of that day they find embodied in the sign, a symbol evident enough to bafflement, and sustained in permanence, although its purpose is to their scrutiny yet unknowable. Mystery it looks, which the seated, attentive pair attempt to reproduce. The rows pictured, amazed at, act their guide, new life afforded those secured in cease by these attempting imitation.
“What is this, this crazy thing they do with their hands?” one asks, one not looking up or elsewhere from his endeavor.
“What is this?” Their bard interlocks fingers in that old sign, letting the frame, left to him, fall to rest against the body. “Why, this was the gesture and the symbol of The League of Berries and Laurels.” The old sign, with origin ancient more than even the gray, neat hair of Ulie’s forebear, obstructs their view of the league.
“It is impossible to do,” the other says, looking over, and then Ulie reiterates the same, frustratedly. Their afternoon cordials they balance as they try.
“It could not be easier. With your thumbs and forefingers, link your hands; and these are the slight berries. Let hang downward from the wrist your other six, and these the ample laurels make.” An epiphany in the motion looks to call to form one from the many possibilities their own ten fingers confuse. Slowly, tentatively peering over, to the other’s hands, each holds a cat’s cradle save for missing string. Progress does, however, get made, the other adapting whenever a new step is discerned. So their consternation tends toward alleviation when suddenly one speaks.
“I think I got it.” Markedly the words are hazarded.
“You do, if ever anyone had.” The downs and occasional optimisms of their frustrated attempts are quelled by the assurance. No word of relief is heard from the anxious cordials, whose surfaces, once the mirror to the pair’s emotion, are now placid and grabbed at again.
“What do we do with it?” J.J. asks, now that he too has figured out the symbol, the symbol now that unravels from before the silver-nitrate photograph; and the hands that held up the example taking then the picture by the frame, it is laid away.
“We ourselves wondered this same thought when we found the artifacts and those etchings as would describe the league to us in thirty-ought. Only hair-brained old pensioners were left when we showed them our discovery, and they laughed and laughed. They laughed and regaled us of their time in the ancient league, when we listened that morning, and once only, as I recall, seated they upon the porch of a local farm-stand, us upon the lawn. They say it was thought up by those children of stodgy Puritans when they disembarked the Mayflower and needed a more enlivening manner to enjoy the country than prayer offered. Another claimed Sherman’s dreadful, rhythmic beat to the seas razed aught, but in the abandoned slave quarters were found treatments on the eternal berries and peaceful laurels. Affected by soldier’s heart, these nothings thought on to pass the time matured along their march, and, it was said, they carried the imagined league with them when they returned to the cold in the north. The stories were told then, as they are this day.” The scene before attuned to, no note gets paid the movement through the pane, but stillness, in all excepting voice, holds sway. “Ultimately, within the league, of which years of my long life there were perhaps none more at liberty, one’s purpose was to find for one’s self what meaning the symbol took. For us, the hands often clapped in prayer held even parts beauty, as fear, command, and made clear the expectation to stand from sitting, and from standing kneel. This was how another form of the hands, a symbol less of onus than irreligion, was adhered. The currents of divinity pierced everything the cathedral through, the archways, and the marble monuments, but also seemed to condone the opening up of hands to the interlocking of the league’s design whenever our thinking strayed. Upon this you both just learned to contrive, the chants repurposed meditation until one looked up from the curiosity, and to see how several others all looked down on the same, unbeknownst to those knowing nothing of its origin, while the congregation else held stony adherence to the faith. Even then, in the classroom or cathedral, there appeared to us a good, and a reason for a group of our own devising, no less than the band the last supper led us to aspire toward, when our left met right in purposed demonstration, the bell rang, or procession ended, and we once again ventured into the world.” The spectators, blinking, lost, appear confounded at the mystery elicited by their question.
Interested in more from Russell Block, you can listen to Act I Scene I of his play Veritas! on Inaction.