October

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FOR CHARLIE GRANT,

THE FATHER OF US ALL

JOHN OF LOURDES: Was there another place to go?

Was there another season

At the end of days,

That led, finally, to Winter?

THE PROPHET: Yes. And already You know its name.

-EDWARD, LORD OF YORKE

The Prophet of Time

There are men from cold Northern Lands

And one, from farthest South

Equal parts Snake, and Worm, and Lizard,

Who is their Lord, and dwells within them, and,

When he is wont, makes them die.

-SEBASTIAN CAPLET

The Lord of Death

And then they made fire to him,

And prayed,

And sought to ward him off

For one year more.

-ROBERT HAMBLING

The Druids

There was a time when all the world was green and cold, when all men were as one man, and the days echoed, mountain through valley to mountain, with October smell. There was a time, one beautiful morning, when all the world smelled of apples.

James Weston reached his hand up, admiring the gold sheen of the hairs on his arm, the sharp red line of plaid where his checkered shirt cuffed wrist, the long curve of his fingers, the dirt beneath his fingernails. He reached his hand up slowly, imagining himself in a movie, not the one he had been in but the one he played in his mind to amuse himself.

His mind was often, to him, a better place than the world. In his mind, the world could be green and cold whenever he wanted. Mountain could call to mountain, apples could bloom, pink-white petals to hard ripe, fruit, whenever he wished.

In the movie of his mind, he froze the hand, admiring the warm new sun on it, the morning cold; and then he began to move again and the hand touched and then grasped the apple it had reached for and then froze.

Admire the apple, he thought in his mind's sound track. Feel the taut skin stretched tight as a woman's abdomen over child. It holds similar fruit; the fruit is burst leaf to flower. Remember the flower.

His index finger moved up to stem, traced the line of stem to branch.

Umbilical. Life cord.

He tugged at the apple. He felt the reluctance in the stem, the resistance to letting go.

Choice
, his sound track told him, the cameras of his eyes locked in stasis on the reluctant apple. He felt his hand on it, pulling, gently insistent, felt the tree, roots, trunk, branch, pulling in reaction against him.

My choice
, he thought.

His fingers tightened on the apple, began to twist.

Mine.

His fingers opened, letting the apple go.

He watched the apple pull back up into the tree; the sigh of leaf against leaf in his head sound track became a joyful whisper.

He laughed, swept his hand down in a long arc to the ground, to snatch a fallen apple. The tree's willing gift. His hand lifted to his mouth, the apple finding purchase between his teeth, good crisp juice squirting down his tongue into his throat.

He took the apple from his mouth, laughed again, chewed his earned bite with relish.

The dog at his feet looked up at him expectantly. "That's the way the world's supposed to work, Rusty," James Weston said, laugh half-leaving his mouth with his words, eyes darkening around the corners where thoughts were left to the emotions of the face.

He put his hand into the long shag coat of the dog, rubbing deep, drawing solace, pleasure from the act.

"That's the way," he repeated, almost inaudibly. His mind movie stared off over the dog and the valley of apple trees between two mountains, to a place where movies stopped and the world really was.

He was a tall man, and lanky. Those who gave him a first look and little more often compared him to Abraham Lincoln. He had, in fact, played Lincoln in the movies not three months before. They had lengthened his forehead by waxing and removing a half inch of his front hairline; had thinned his hair, straightened the thick curls that tended to congregate to either side of his part; had changed the part from right to left. They had built his nose, made it longer, fleshier; deepened his eyes for effect—though his eyes, hooded and gray, already nearly matched Lincoln's own. He had learned to change his smile, from the slow thing that tended to blossom to full-blown grin, to a melancholy line that merely lengthened and creviced with dark humor. He had accentuated his stoop; had learned to hold his hands behind his back with solemn sadness. He had learned to weep without shedding tears; had learned to throw his leg over the arm of a chair when sitting in it, not so much sitting as hanging upon it, all angles, as a crane might look if forced to sit on furniture. He had learned to nod slowly, and speak thoughtfully and resonantly, though Lincoln's own voice was high and did not carry. He had learned to do all these things, and he had played through the Civil War, watched it unfold for him as it had unfolded for Lincoln, and Lincoln had slowly seeped into him, taking over his bones.

On the last day of shooting, after his last scene, a wooing of Mary Todd shot out of sequence—having already watched, in other scenes, her dissolution—he quietly took off and folded Lincoln's coat, and placed it on a chair, black stovepipe atop the pile, walked from his trailer, and kept walking.

He had been wearing then the same clothes he wore today, white stiff shirt, long pants and suspenders, and black shoes with thick soles, and the steps of six months had worn the soles down, and led him from Abraham Lincoln to here —to, he hoped, himself again.

He felt the regular, quick bellows of the dog's huffing under his hand. The dog, a red setter with eyes that looked as though they held laughter, met his gaze and barked hoarsely, then continued to huff, tongue lolling.

"What is it, Rusty?" he said, lowering himself to the ground, crossing his legs to meet the dog on his own level. "You hungry?"

The dog huffed again, without enthusiasm. Around them were scattered the cores of half a dozen apples, equal dinner for himself and Rusty.

"What is it then? Thirsty? Want to run?"

In answer, Rusty lowered himself to the ground, paws before him sphinxlike, head resting on one forearm. "Tired?"

Rusty shifted his head to his other forearm.

Weston put his hand on the dog's head, rubbing deep. A sound not unlike that of a cat's purr issued from Rusty's throat and he closed his eyes.

"Let me think," Weston said. He studied the apple trees, spaced in files around him, studied past them the darkening autumn blue sky, the hard-edged cumulus clouds lazily sailing southeast. For a moment his thoughts slipped to metaphor: he thought himself a ship sailing southeast with the clouds, with sails full unfurled, heading from Vancouver, foreign port, mock America for a mock Civil War, to New York, home port—where life waited for him to begin again.

He focused away from metaphor and saw the sky again; the clouds had moved beyond the trees and were gone, leaving him behind. Only clear, night-deepening blue remained, ocean or sky. Cold nevertheless. Maybe that part of his life, and the pain that waited for his living it again, could wait.

Maybe he wasn't ready for that pain yet, again.

His eyes shifted from sky to trees overhead.

Maybe he could work, pick apples.

He laughed and stood up. "All right, Rusty." The dog watched him contentedly as he stretched up, shouting at the protestation of his tired bones. It was early autumn, early in his life. They would sleep in the midst of apples. Tomorrow, like today, the chill would leave the world for a while as the sun played weakly at Indian summer. He would roll up his sleeves and stay in this orchard and pick fruit.

"It's settled, we'll stay," he said to the dog.

Unthinking, forgetful of the inner movie he had so recently reviewed, he ignored the fallen bounty around him, stretched his hand out to a nearby tree, and twisted an apple from its stem, with a viciousness that would have frightened him had he known it was there.

Where is Lydia? Teatime has passed, it's growing dark. You'd think she was still a child, so forgetful.

Such a cold fall day, I can feel it through the window glass. The trees shorn of foliage, the apple orchards look like winter

What is that feeling? A chill on my fingertips, running through my hand like electricity to my elbow, I know that feeling.

The Time Machine.

I laugh, pulled suddenly from the present, in the void between memories, between tired, broken axons, not knowing where I am or where I will land.

Don't the metaphors ever stop?

It's like this, some days. I laugh again, on the cusp between years. Alzheimer's disease.
Presenile
dementia. I know all about it, in the flashing moments such as this, when I belong to nowhere, anchored in it firmly. I know the Time Machine my mind has become.

I laugh once more.

No, the metaphors never stop.

I feel content in these brief instants of clarity between present and past. Disembodied, but still myself. Not part of the continuum of physics, the meat-and-potatoes world. Mind. The Time Machine is my ill mind.

If only I could control it. If only I could stay here, in this dream world of disembodiment.