wholesale lamb
Concluding Short Chapters
Lee's Last Glance
"If he, no they, if they could understand," said Lee, half questioningly, then in thin air waved his hands at nobody in particular, to show how unthinkable that was. "If he could have only understood me," repeated the sixty-seven year old man. His eyes considering his daughter's convictions. "Then we'd be able to come to some agreement on issues, but as it is-" a long pause came, "I must go," he mumbled to himself, "that's the only solution. We must rid ourselves of the idea That this is possible. The fact that I desired it for so long is the origin of all our thoughts, my thoughts, troubles, anyhow … "as if she had not come already to this conclusion, and my boys just the same.
"I wanted to have my daughter but we will be able to go on living, living better in each other's memory, sometimes in some kinder and more honorable way." As it is, we both seem to persevere one another, "talking as if she Was next to him, saying 'adios' in the only way he knew. Hereforward, the old man was panting with effort to step up and onto the floor of the plane, he paused to catch his breath … A woman took his ticket, as if to confirm he knew where he was going. He nodded his head, and as he searched for his seat, number sixty-seven, he thought about the valley and mountains and the ocean, and no harassment. He was left entirely to himself. In his seat he sat straight back. He was intent on leaving as fast as possible. So he could get back to his writings, and no one would interfere with his progress. Only when the plane was in the air did he turn his head to see his Midwestern hometown completely through the little heavy-duty glass or plastic porthole next to him. And then he rested his neck muscles with a thin pillow on the back of the seat, put in his earplugs, played his cassette player-his mother had given him before she passed on, a decade prior-with the old Rock and Roll music of His day. With his legs now stretched out, they had been getting stiff, Lee shifted his mind to how gracious the Lord was, and how damning the Devil could be.
"Thank heaven, a father does not need to be taught how to see through his daughter, his son in law, and his sons." Lee challenged, descending Atlanta's airport, where he'd make his next connection. "I would have loved Jay, had he not turned his back on me!" Those words went heckling through his brain. "They were all so innocent, not so long ago, and now all truly devilish human beings." But nonetheless, the day before Lee had left for his birthplace, he had paid the local church to have a mass for Jay, his last gift, to a man he felt lower than a stoker.
Now sitting there on the underserts of Atlanta, he got to thinking: 'We strive all or lives to reach some kind of justice, for humanity's sake, we are all given an open door, but often too often, there are obstacles in the way , Like door-keepers that do not want you to enter into the halls of justice, to prove you have been treated unjust. And when one grows old, and feeble, and too weak to challenge the door-keeper, he shuts and locks the door … Then it dawns on him: it was never meant for man to get justice here on earth- but try as You may! '
And his last thought before he fell to sleep was: "I can not blame Jay anymore!"
JL 's Confirmation
Now in flight, JL was with her father in law, G, "I mean just what I say," she told him, and the two had been rubbing their hands for some time in the hallway of her apartment, joyfully. He put on his hat and said his goodbyes, with a suspiciousness unfounded, hearing Lee was in the air over percents Atlanta by now.
JL decided this day to take a long stroll with her boys, feeling they deserved such a reply-even though her nose still hurt from the incidental sharp nudge it took a while back during her and her boys' hiding this past week from their grandpa , It was a nebulous trick, thought one of the boys, but necessary to keep his mother happy, and the ideology set forth by their father, and peace, someone or thing had to be sacrificed, taking the place of a lamb, it was Grandpa.
G. had told everyone how Great, how huge his son was, and she knew her father would simply have countered that with: 'No, he was more the mouse than a giant, or a giant mouse!' And that would not do nor help, so it was better this way, plus the boys needed a huge heroic figure to follow in his footsteps. In any case, the boys smiled and were for the most part silent, until properly asked, at which time, JL started giggling so amiably she could not stop. When the boys both looked at her oddly, she said, "Let bygones be bygones." The elder of the boys by two years, thought, "Just what does that mean?" But it was just a thought, not spoken. Then she bought up the future. The older boy was twenty, and had a girlfriend: she thought, as if with her eyes, staring at him: they will soon be promised to one another, and then married, how delightful. And she then started dreaming about her future and the grandchildren her two boys' wives will have given her. Another journey in life she speculated. And that was all she thought about for a long while, as they strolled up the sidewalk …
The Mantaro Valley
(Lee's Return)
At long last Lee was back in South America among the many companions he had made in the past decade. He thread himself back into his old routine. And what had been so far away was all at once, seemingly so near-: bodies moving poetically here and there, as if at a cadence of bouncing syllables. Behind him people were nudging him to pass right and left, back and forth, and his Peruvian wife clutching his hand, as to not lose him in the crowd?
The Mantaro Valley is deep and wide, set against the pressing and towering Andes, and Lee, he found himself standing stone-still, in the plaza de arms, near the old cathedral, spoke to the overshadowing mountains, as often he had done in The past upon his return, -most eye to eye with the sun …
"I'm back," he said.
"That's no surprise," said the voice of the tallest mountain, inside Lee's head, "It's not by pure chance you came back you know, it's your home."
The Mountain's voice was as if encouraged by his return, and quite friendly, because he was not a big talker like most Wankas, and so when he did speak, it was a special occasion.
Lee was panting, the thin air from being up so high, always upon his return distracted him, he had to readjust to it; It typically took a few days, that's why his heart got enlarged, so the doctors proclaimed.
"We know," began a conversation by the oldest of the surrounding mountains, "that you and your Wanka wife, even though she likes Lima more than here, would come back."
"Yes," said Lee, "mountain folk are more understanding, warmer than North Americans."
"I know," said the smallest mountain of the group, "not a spark of understanding I bet!"
Then Lee's wife stuck from her silence, "Tell them they kept you longer than I cared for you to be gone Lee, I bet they'll understand." And Lee did explain that they had not been separated in fifteen years more than three days total, on three different occasions, making that twenty-four hours per separation.
Said the oldest mountain, "Tell your wife, it is a misfortune even to be separated one day, save a week or more, I can not imagine myself being gone for a second!" And Lee verbalized what the Old Mountain said.
"See Lee," said Delilah, "he understands!"
"The mountains in the valley here are cleaver, they always take the side of the Wanka women." Said Lee.
"Yes," said Delilah, "they would agree with that I'm sure."
…
From morning to evening stretching into the dream-like night, there was always a stream of traffic that looked an inextricable, and inexphaustible mass of confusion in the city proper, along with the shortened brown skinned Peruvians, mountain folk, side to side with colorful Brick tile roofs, and adobe structured homes, and every kind of vehicle modern man has infiltrated into the riotous air came the noises and dust and smells all penetrating within the invisible, multitudinous zigzagging busy little metropolis, bouncing off its many cobblestone streets, and scattered Into its human habitat dispersed through the valley, which took nothing seriously until the last minute, without committing one's self.
Furthermore, the city folk in the parks or on the side streets, the folks standing behind their venders making fruit juices, or mondongo soup as a morning warm-up for the day's events, who sold this and that-Lee would tell his North American And European visitors, not to take seriously the idly staring of the Peruvian Wanka, they were just getting used to global visitors. For those who intended to remain, like him, it was sheer ruin to take it to heart, mountain folk were curious folk, perhaps a little noisy too, for they were sheltered people at one time, in another world, stretching now, into and Out of, the late 20th to the new early 21st Century, their arms and legs, as far as they could reach, figuratively speaking. Perhaps this is a little exaggerating, but not far from the truth. And again, I capitalize on the noise, an annoyance for the old folk, yet a profitable business for hearing-aid companies, and those doctors specializing in that diverse medical area-the ear!
Lee had been gone longer than he expected, as that mountain had so expressed, but for eighteen-months of that duration, it was spent in Lima, which they could care less about, and that time in North America, which they had even a Kind of curiosity in, simply added to its length. Here, Lee saw that nothing much had changed.
Now deep rooted and back into mountain city life, and its thin air, his lips and eyes produced an unchanging smile of happiness, which appeared to enhance his presence, and composition, and his wife realized this.
The End of the Story
Written: 2-26-2015 to 3-11-2015 / 10 (No 1078)
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