The League of Berries & Laurels: Book the First - First Chapter (Pt. VII)
Continued from:
“How did you rouse your spirits?”
“Tell us, did a fallen comrade visit you to say, as you pondered the void dimly, ‘be advised and take up burden.’?”
“Was it like the moment I saw my escape was barred, and the town went looking for me, when truly I was only stuck in the drained pool at the community center, this after hours? The episode remembers me to that despair. That despair me to this episode makes coherent.”
“Vainly, I sought shelters for my shame, and into a storm drain took I myself out of the sun, into dank dark. The hollow therein barred all consideration whence no tutor of the air could reach through the echo and console. Stifled anguish heaped on stifled anguish, no moment vouched for a once favored nature, no moment did more than deepen cares. It was without hope I opened my eyes and read on those walls extensive hobo markings. Secrets of the language were plainly writ all over in that faded decade. Their map of hospitality, or of the damned ungrateful, whose homes had store, but the owners no ennobling traits, also laid out the tunnels beneath our field of battle. At a point I assumed was lowest many had travelled before. Then the anguish deadened in the hollows as the study proved my quietude. Like the wind, above me far, the two sides rushed. About the neighborhood, many tents were placed, in which the other flag was hidden. When the coast appeared clear down one way or the other, then, from the bushes, up would jump some devils. From the trees, down would fall some more, and a great tussle would ensue if, outnumbered, the ambushed could not run into retreat unavoidable. All this, the fight to keep our carrots in our caps, and the struggle to steal their ginger free of any nibbles, took place without the greens of my carrot bobbing like the feather of the tern in lofty sky. All this I considered in my exclusion. All came to semblance, almost to laughter.” With a glint of ancestral talent in his eye, a fixed pause inspires the interlocutors to this long off somber study, and all laugh, the two the floor to flatten beneath their rolls of delight. “My strategy was set. There were canoes used, ambushes contrived, rear-guard actions, and every like tactic and deceit. Many devices were tested toward the end of glory, but none knew this plot below them coming to grips. Their feared for ginger roots knew nothing of the greatest danger to them. You know I mastered best the field, for I alone had the honor of being photographed with my carrot on this day in question. The scrapes you see prove I was every bit the daring bluebeard. My chief rival, see this fellow here, amicable because it was but sport and pride at stake, was the last bite of that acerb ginger I won that day.”
“How came it to pass? Your rival Dardanelles looks like a sportsman among sportsmen.”
“Even this newfound axis of the struggle must have been uncertain when your rival Dardanelles looks like a sportsman among sportsmen.”
“That he was. Many recounted their tales, and careful tallies kept where all were met when they had been bested; I remained below, climbing ladders to manholes such that I could reclaim the fold. All this neighborhood about you looked to run hot to me with the looming enemy and their spicy ginger. Upon a trio had I crossed, surprise my advantage, but, but for numbers, evenly met. What would I do? Behind them, careful with the seal of the earth, careful to place it where no suspicion of my methods could be stumbled upon, I considered. Along the trunk that kept the treehouse they scouted from, my hands and feet adhered to the rule of bark, not the rungs, until, merrily and softer than sound, I slipped by the window onto floorboards behind them. With the lesser of the league, I may have rushed them, for I was the very boast of our band, and while they reached for my ankles, I could quickly do my business. The game, it must be noted, had thinned some of our sapling clubmates, those of weaker constitution, or greater girth, than this late in the game would allow for. These, all there, were very near me in our rivalries.”
“It sounds grim.” J.J. paces wildly, heading for exit, toward his place, like again to caps and clothes.
“Is it curtains for you, grandpa?” In the room, a laminar realization need betray nothing when toward lethe slink all aged cares, there, upon banks now known for the cares nightly to have fallen on this cottage, the body with its pains will nearly be slipped. Their grandpa only smiles at the importance of passage. “Grandpa?”
“Visitors, be you cheered, for without thought I secured my place in the frame unequaled, one amongst all that make the gesture with a symbol of that summer still carried in my cap. The steps I hazarded upon the boards I played to make no creak bore me closer, closer still, and then by bated breath I alleviated those watchful caps of weights triumvirate. By the time they heard chewing lounged in the window sill, they turned. ‘Elkhart, fool as you are, we have caught you creeping in, and thinking you to be the mightiest and most dangerous of the rest, now we have you dead to rights,’ spoke one to me, and they all three approached. Imagine how it transpired that I should throw down their mangled roots, looking unperturbed, them nonplussed, as they touched to their cap and felt where should have been felt the obstruction of a gnarly root. Treachery one spoke without hesitation. ‘We three are defeated, ashamed, hostages in our vantage we thought safest, guarded by fence and home impenetrable. Still there are no observers to note any outcome. The proud carrot looks easy to snap as it did when I thought I still possessed my ensign. Should we not simply do the foul deed?’”
“That rat!”
If you’re interested in more writing by Russell Block, you can listen to Act I Scene I of his play Veritas! on Inaction.