Wicker and Stone and Coral (Part 4)

The night was deep serious and they had remained solid in their contentedness for what was a record for the two of them. It had been disturbed for only a few seconds every so often when Lester would offer up a whistled rendition of La Vie En Rose that came from the heart not the lungs, as though the indigo of his shirt and the night had seeped into his mood.

He noticed in that drive-time between the wickerman and the thing that would happen next a tendency of the Tiger to veer towards any hares, weasels or deers that hopped, scurried or leapt from a bush on one side of a lane to a bush on the other. It was as though the car wanted to sink its front bumper into their necks. Lester knew the only will strong enough to control that bastard car was hers, it did what she commanded and what she commanded only suited what she had determined was the character of the vehicle. So, he wondered if somewhy she had decided it necessary to scare those creatures half to death by bringing them within an inch of it. Who knows, maybe she fancies getting some art out of any she hits, Lester thought.

During the newest cover of La Vie that Lester was treating car and drink and her too, a version that one might think was nothing but square ball jazz if you hadn’t noticed the small quick whistles he added through his teeth during the inhale, she told him, “Work the steerer and that for me for a minute.” He leant across as she flung back her arms searching through bags on the rear bench until she came back up front with her painting overalls. “Ok now the peddills.”

“We’re on a good straight Brett White we can just coast it,” Lester explained, realising she wouldn’t be taking much notice of her surroundings at the present moment. So, she cast her legs upon the wheel and began yanking the paint spattered things over her outfit proper. She pulled quick enough to spoil any designs the good fellow Death had for the two of them, but hard enough that they didn’t half come close to shaking hands with him through all their wobbling and swerving along the road. Just before the straight un-straightened her feet and hands went to normal and Lester’s knuckles returned from white back to healthy and safe pink. 

He was aware that their journey had become her journey. For now. He liked it, this feeling of being lost and distant but safe with a fellow boozer and good companion. He felt there was glory and honour in it. It was part of why he had been drawn to her those years ago, she did what she wanted in the way she wanted and swept up into it all whoever she wanted. Might it end, then, on whichever terms she chose? Her mind and her wants changed with each other – and each more than the other – it would be hard to see coming, true. There’d be no feeling that she were losing interest in the things he had to say. Women could find companions simple, and with her power over nature it’d be double easy. Lester was, nevertheless, staunchly resolute in his simple gratitude that he had won that particular lottery.

She pulled over pretty sharp and then run her fingers through his white and dukey hair. He watched curiously as she got out and went back to the boot. It was more a rusty tube train than a boot to tell truth proper. Next Lester knew he was blinded. The window went down, from the outside somehow. Her lips were on his and he levitated. He got that shake in his body and his foot tapped against the worn carpet of the footwell. He was almost Lester Holcombe-Flintstone.

Her breath walked off into the dark and he was after her quick, stumbling to keep with the up-down of the head torch light. A clearing. Lester’s eyes adjusted steadily and he began to find outlines in it all. Surrounding him and probably her still were towers, some shorter than him and some twice as tall. Or were they all the same and he was being played by the distance and the dark and the inexperience. He found her. The torch was near disappeared, flat against something so tight as to make it useless. She was leaning up on a monster, easy 15-foot, head pressed to it and arms up over, like he used to find her in the house and like used to unnerve him. She looked like Atlas, holding up deep thoughts and inner demons heaped on top of the skies themselves. She would always do it after drinking all alone and she had thought herself into a panic about something melancholical; the burdens would rain down on her and soak up into her skin, dragging her down the plughole of a serotonergic sink ‘til she could barely hold them off anymore. All because of something like skewed and snapped conduits within that couldn’t contain her thoughts and feelings, letting them spew out into her blood and bones to the core of her, driving her actions and concerns. Had she been in this place before? She always did get bad too smart and too proper too easy, Lester carried on, thinking back to how it only took two or three visits to her house before they started going proper for him to realise. He had learnt from her honesty how she could be. He had learnt to prepare for the worst.

So, now, for example, walking from where or cycling from there to the house, he would rehearse his response to the emergency services when they ask “Is the patient breathing?”. He would rehearse his part in tidying her upon finding her wrists cut and bleeding into some really and truly lovely looking bath water, or foam spewing up out of her mouth. It had never happened as yet but memorising his role could only be good. It might even shave some seconds off the overall response time and help her. Here we go...Fuck knows man sometimes you want that type of shite to happen to you, you know? Just something interesting isn’t it. Never broke my leg at school or cut MYSELF or had a parent die when I was young. Just normal. Boring I suppose. Obviously I think on this a minute and see straight and all but there’s no harm in thinking it. Thinking it wouldn’t shove the overdose into her brain or the blade into her vein would it? I solemnly swear that the most barbaric crimes are physiological and atavistic in origin, deriving from animal instincts, lying dormant but raging to the surface under illness or meteorites or sexual abstinence. 

Brett White raised herself up off the stone. Back here in Stanton fucking Drew, she thought. With her head light back up and running she could see plain in front of her the handprint red and bright and painful still. It brought back all the work of that one. That brother-in-law of the natural born son of those dead second-choice godparents. That distant somehow relation who closed the gap between her and him with force and lust that sent her into those bad type goosebumps. That one what had done her up so it hadn’t just been physical, but emotional or spiritual or psychological with it, whichever word best describes that part of human nature that, when damaged, causes quite unexpectedly one’s face to droop and fall slack from the skull and one’s mood to darken after a perfect day of Manhattans and books and sun and the beautiful brown eyes of an old friend for company. He was a Segura. His focus was the soul and not the body. He had been too big on his smoko and his drinky. Thanks to her his big wasn’t big anymore and she smiled some for that thought.

The sequence of it all ran back through her mind. Running, shouting, trees, hiding, crying, running, crying, stones out of nowhere, earring out of ear and ripped across hand, hand pressed against the monolith. She hadn’t any leeches at the time nor any knowledge of or concern for the balance of blood or phlegm or black and yellow bile in her, she had just wanted rid of all the bad blood. It had worked. She hadn’t thought him into her mind until now but there was always something. Some itch at the base of her that she couldn’t scratch because her mind couldn’t be crafted into a solid enough hand.

Now, as she dunked a stiff-bristled brush into a bucket of cleaning agent thick with ammonia, she thought of how Lester had always clattered on persistently about the no longer engaging or dwelling on all that had past and all that offered no benefit to you and how she didn’t want to do any more cutting for fear of letting go of any of the good blood that she had all through her now. Brett White stepped back and surveyed her second masterpiece. Where there once was a bloody handprint there was a bloody handprint cleaned up to show two eyes and a grin.

He relieved her of the bucket and brush. The crash of them landing in the distance brought her back. His coat became hers. In the car he asked, “Are you well, sweet?”

“I’m well, ElAitch. My blood is well and good and clear,” she winced some at a smarting pain through her when she placed her hand on the steerer once more.

She focused on the road and her neck locked into place sudden. Lester sat looking at her, trying to warm her with his eyes. She was nice to look at after all.

*

He was still looking at her. Pink and what was returning to her cheeks he felt, not that he could see much in the dark. Will she loosen up again? When has she ever been so stiff? It doesn’t bother me none too much, I like her big time. I just want to see her happy. Is she happy now? I don’t want to lure out more of that venom. Would she like me if she knew I was worrying so about her? The last thing I want to be is one of those fellas who always asks, “Are you ok? Are you well?”, but sometimes you have to check you know it’s important to keep up with what she’s thinking. Maybe I don’t know what she’s thinking after all. No. I do. I do for always. Which do I prefer, though? I just want to warm her, and why can’t I? Tell you what this is how you know you’ve got it bad and big proper when you’re just sitting and staring hoping that they’re thinking and considering turning to sit and stare at you in return. That Jim Morrison shirt she’s wearing is listening. It’s looking at me. What’s it trying to say? Is it speaking to me? Call my fucking name then Jim you fucking coward I fucking dare you! What was that? You don’t know what’s gonna happen but you wanna have your kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames? Me too pal me too always and always and with her and with her. It’s hard though, you know. She’s filling me up with holes. One day one of us will end up flowing out into the street and the gutter and down into the drain and out into the sewers and into the sea and then the whole earth will share the feelings we have for one another and be fixed. Never mind that Huck Finn remedy. We can cure it all. What if she doesn’t want to cure it? I know she changes what like nothing else I’ve ever seen or known, and she has a penchant for destroying things I know just these past hours she’s been getting closer and closer to knocking through one of them woodland animals. Still going are you Jim? Jumped, humped, born to suffer Made to undress in the wilderness. I can’t quite make it out fella, you know I’m not praying, don’t you? I’m just worried and lonely is all. Everybody just needs to keep fucking everybody until we’re all the same colour. That’d be your cure for sure Jim, I know you enjoyed a bit of that rock ‘n’ roll…but that one is from Bulworth and you were t-shirt long before that so how could you know? Confusion…No connections…Come here…I love you…Peace on earth…Will you die for me?...Eat me…This way…The end. I see all now Jim, I’m vibrating with it all. Vibrating so fierce I’m hot with it. I’m burning with it Jim. Burning cold though, you know? No that’s just she’s got my coat on I reckon. I wonder if that book in the pocket and the memory of what it is to me is weighing heavy on her at all. Fucking hope so. Back on track now. What was that, Jim? Just stop looking at her then I suppose. That easy is it? Not Sisyphean at all is it. You know as soon as you stop she’ll care that you’ve stopped and want you to start something new again because she wants you always to be trying to get inside up in her soul and mixing it with yours. Some are striving for freedom of speech and I’m trying my all for freedom of thought. Well, well, well, here he is, Herzog himself. Et tu, Moses? Speak, damn spot. Speak for yourself and for me if you know my language – that of old love and compassion and spleen. Don’t be embarrassed. I know I know, you’re all letters and letters but any contribution is valuable round these parts partner I promise you now. Will never understand what women want. What do they want? They eat green salad and drink human blood. Good point and no doubt about it. She wants my blood. It stimulates her mind and in return I don’t even get a lick of hers. Not even when I ‘VIVAMUS, MEA LESBIA, ATQUE AMEMUS’ at her with a smoulder like Aldous and a Catullian low rumble. Stop looking at her tear yourself away but she’s nice to look at boys just stop and stop and stop.

*

Brett White felt it all and reached for his hand. “I win,” she finally said, melting him easy and the frost that had built up on her and between them both.