The Dionysian The Dionysian by Carroll Brown   Dark night fell, came plummeting down from the sky the way it does on late summer days in that part of the country. Branches twisted their thin fingers up into the air, grasping at the heavens and always missing, and the tree tops moaned as the stars slipped through like sand. The hilltop stood in black silhouette, silent and immobile, holding still for its guest. He squatted, resting on his heels and looking at the dark. Finally, after a long time, he reached in to his pocket, pulled out a lighter and flipped it open with a sharp metallic snap. He hit the wheel, sent up a high warbling flame, battered by the wind but holding on. He brought the flame close his face and drew on the cigarette. The cloud of smoke looked like a reflection of the Milky Way above him. Briefly, before the flame went out, his face revealed itself, the way the hair flipped back away from it, the sharp jutting chin with its badly mown field of stubble, the harsh shadows that filled the valleys where the flame couldn't reach, the dark eyes. The lighter snapped close, and night settled back around him. He popped the lighter back in his pocket and reached down, wrapped his hand around a battered tin cup and dashed out the last drops of coffee onto the dry earth of the hill. He drew on the cigarette, letting galaxies rise into the sky, and held the cup out straight away from him, waiting. He didn't know when it began or why; (overhead, the stars disappear, shut off, one by one then in whole crowds, as the clouds move in) he just knew it had always been there, as long as he could remember. (a thunder rolls across the sky, the mating call of the quickening clouds) Even as a child, he could remember... (a teardrop falls from the sky, hits the cold ground and slowly runs downhill) Some called it a gift. He really didn't know. It was like a hand, or an eye. He didn't think about it much anymore. (the rain comes down, the heavens emptying their watery load on the hilltop; the tin cup spits and rattles, and fills) Some called him mystic, some conman. In the backwoods they called him a wizard. (the cup fills to the rim; the rain stops. He lets out a puff of smoke and puts the cup to his lips, drinks. The clouds, discharged, trail away in little knots. The stars shine.) Mostly they just called him the weatherman. ~ The longer a person walks the road, the longer it gets. Bobby Ferring had been walking it for two weeks straight, and it lay flat and winding before and behind him like the sloughed off skin of a black Ouroboros. The rain came falling down, tumbling out of the sky in slow sad drops that hung in the air and clung to his face, dripped down through his flattened hair and past the corners of eyes that stared out through a blood-stained network, a map of all the places he had been. It caught on the leaves over his head, hesitated for a moment, then springboarded down on top of his head; he could feel the bones of his skull slowly washing away. For a minute he wasn't sure if the red haze came from staring out of those eyes or was in the air itself, but then he heard the shrill wind of rubber on wet asphalt and hunkered down lower in the undergrowth. The police car sped by without slowing, its lights blending with the stain of his eyes and the blue-white lightning crackling overhead, and he stepped out of the forest, watching it disappear down the leaf-roofed tunnel into grey evening. He hiked his pack higher off the base of his spine and started walking again. ~ He hovered just outside the ring of yellow light, like a shy moth. The knock had sounded timpanic in the still night, frightening him into retreat, and he waited in the shadows, listening as the soft padding of feet and the creak of old wood came closer. The door opened. She looked out into the darkness, shading the porch light from her eyes with a raised hand. Blonde hair, tied loosely behind her head, broke randomly from its bonds and hovered in the humid air, reflecting back the amber light in a quivering halo. The night was empty beyond the door, and she leaned against the screen, peering out, her eyes creasing in familiar paths. He stepped forward then, and she gasped at the sudden emergence of the figure from the darkness, stepping back as he came forward into the light. "Hi, Kathy." She looked closer at the bedraggled man, her eyes widened, and she flung the screen open, standing before him and staring up into his face. "Bobby?" The name trilled in her ear, sang up from the mnemonic depths until it reverberated and shouted through her mind. She shifted from foot to foot, she wanted to reach out and touch his skin, feel the rough fabric of his face just to know he was real; her lips parted and closed, stammering in silence. He smiled wanly at her. "I'm glad you remember me, Kat. I was afraid you wouldn't. It's been a long time." "Fifteen years. Ten since you wrote." He shook his head, grinning a little sheepishly. "The years have wings, don't they?" "My God, Bobby. My God." She repeated the words over and over, as if invoking him, calling him into substance. He stopped her. "I need help, Kat." He looked down at her, and the miles came spilling out of his eyes. She saw the way his shoulders sagged, his back bowed like an old horse, the brow hung in heavy clouds over sunken sockets, the deep lines that the dull knife of a hard life had etched in his face. She took his hand and led him inside, out from beneath the big sky. A place in the barn, room to lay his body down, was all he would accept, though she pleaded with him to stay in the house. She relented at last, and sent him out the back door with a lantern as she gathered blankets and food, pointing out the path. She touched his arm as he passed her. "You'll be there when I come out, won't you?" she said. "You won't disappear? You're not a ghost, are you?" "Wish I was, Kat," he replied. "Swear to god, sometimes I wish I was." The barn stood away from the house, squatting on the edge of the geometric land, its foundations melded like bedrock into the dirt. Inside, where cows used to low and huddle against the cold, the rusted carcass of a machine slept, covered by the soot of its own slow decay, and the air swirled with the dust of moldering hay and disuse. The big double doors stood shackled and sagging like the portals of some abandoned cathedral. "Bobby?" Even the whisper of her breath seemed to raise the dust. She stepped in further, watching the ghosts that winked in and out of existence as her eyes adjusted to the dark. Nothing stirred. She whispered his name again. "Up here." She startled, almost dropping her bundle, looked up and saw his face smiling down from the loft for a brief instant, lit by a circle of warm light, before he pulled it back and disappeared behind the monument of hay. She climbed up. It was like being on a mountain top. He had opened the loft doors, and the valley stretched forth beneath their feet like a glittering silver sea in the last light of the drowning moon. The grasses undulated, each feathered top catching the breeze that skidded over the surface and tossing it to the next stalk; it gamboled across the plain to the foot of the barn and up the planks like a squirrel, blew her hair back. She laughed and turned back, smiling. The bag of food lay disemboweled in front of him, and he was picking up each item, sampling it. "Jesus, Bobby, why're you back here?" she said finally, after giving him time to sate himself. "Just passing through, one last time." "One last time?" He tucked the last bite of a sandwich into his mouth, chewed in silence. "Where've you been?" "Everywhere," he said; he felt her scowl, added, "Further south mostly. Tennessee, Kentucky, southern Virginia." She waited for him to continue. He didn't. "Jesus, Bobby, tell me something, anything!" "The less you know, the better." She knelt by his side, took his ragged hand in both of hers, squeezing. "What's wrong? You show up here after all these years, and all you want is six feet to lie down in, in the middle of all this?" He didn't answer, and she watched him as he took a piece of straw, poked its end into the lantern, staring at it as it burned up in a sudden puff of flame. She dropped his hand, shaking her head as she plopped down on a bale. She remembered...she remembered so many times. But one time especially; a summer night, the stars hung like candles in the sky, guttering and flaming in the distance and reflecting over and over again on the glass surface of the lake. They had sat together on the shores of the burning water, celebrating the passing of school and their entrance into adulthood. He'd had a glow about him, like a circle of lights strung out of dreams. He shined, and she'd laughed and felt warm just to be near him. She'd gone up the hill to the car for a moment, and when she came back he had risen, stood by the shores of the lake with his arms raised high. And all of a sudden the rain had come, a warm soft rain almost floating down from the sky, and the drops brushing the end of her nose and wafting down to the grass, the bubbles bursting and washing over each blade. And he had stood there, his arms held up, the rain running down his face, like he could catch it all. "You were meant for better things." "Those were long ago days," he replied, and she knew he had been remembering also. "I can hardly remember what it was like back then." "All you gotta do is try." "You don't understand. I'm not the same man I was." "Who is, Bobby?" She said it tenderly, came to him and placed her hand on his cheek. "Who is?" He got up quickly, backing away from her touch, and went to the loft doors, staring out at the darkness. She rubbed her fingertips, and felt the warm moisture on them. As if in response, a rain came down outside. It fell like downy cottonwood seeds, drifting gently out of the sky that moments before had been clear and bright. She rose and stood next to him, gazing out at the shimmering curtain, listening as it fell with tingling laughter and percussive snaps, sweeping through the grass. "Hear that," he said softly. "It's like a crystal orchestra. I used to listen to it coming down at night when I was a kid, bouncing off my window. I'd lay up all night long hearing it like music." "Just like the lake," Kathy said in wonderment. "The raindrops hitting the water and you standing there, calling it down to sing to you." He thrust an arm out into the shower, let it slowly fill his cupped hand, and brought the water up to his face. He rubbed it in, covered his face, his cheeks, his forehead, and his features glimmered and flowed in the lantern light. "I've got this gift," he said slowly. ~ A cloud of young faces hovers around the domed hood of an old truck. For a moment they look like a backwoods circus act, bottles balanced on their upturned lips, then the last of the liquor flows through the slender necks, and the bottles sail across the road, crashing against the rocks of the culvert. Bobby Ferring steps out of the darkness. He wears the grime of the road in a dusty mask. The youths notice his appearance, turn as one. Bobby swerves around them as they block the road, but they're faster; he is met by a wall of bodies. One of them advances. The night is noiseless, an old recording with the sound turned down. The dust flies up from the road, but the scuffling noise of his feet in the road as he is pushed backward is only an imagination. He steps forward again, resolutely (a thunder beckons from far away) a fist flies forward, sending him sprawling in the dirt. He lays there shaking, his nose bleeding, trying to control (a wind from on high, shooting down in columns) he rises, moves to go around, sees the blow as it comes from the side, a ham-fisted jackhammer driving toward his jaw and the mouth of the big boy is open, laughing. He grabs the fist (the sky explodes in sound and light; the youths scatter as a crackling fills the air) the big boy's eyes are wide, scared, he is trying to run but his fist is held, he is pivoting and swinging from the fist like a weathercock, he sees the light in Bobby's eyes (the javelins of heaven come screaming down, and the thunder of their arrival drowns out the panicked cries) Bobby sat up, howling. The air in the loft was thick with hay, twirling in little cyclones as the wind rushed in the open loft doors and careened off the bales. The sky above glowed with blue-white electricity, streamers of power unfurling through the deluge. He stared at it in horror. "Stop it! Stop it, stop it, stop it!" He screamed until his throat bled, until the tears filled his eyes and his mouth and he collapsed in front of the doors. Some time later, the storm abated. ~ "So tell me about last night?" Bobby shrugged. "A nightmare." She handed him another nail, shaking her head as his pounding resumed. All around the farmyard equipment lay scattered and overturned in the mud; shutters hung askew from the house by one hinge; the chickens cowered in their coops. She snorted. "Nightmare? I'd love to see your sweet dreams, all sunshine and blue sky. Dream me up a summer day, Bobby, like the days down by the lake." "It doesn't work that way. Not anymore." "But it used to?" He lowered the coop, letting it rest on its new leg and eyeing it suspiciously as it settled into the mud. He set the hammer down, looking away across the fields. "It used to be like a whisper in my head, like a light wind always blowing. I could push it this way and that, talk to it a little." He shook his head. "Now, it doesn't hear me anymore. It's so loud, it makes my head hurt, sometimes I think my head will explode and all the storms in the world will come spilling out." He sighed. "I used to have dreams, Kat. I used to dream about going over to Africa. Bringing rain to the desert. It was gonna be beautiful. But I couldn't get there, I didn't have any money." He laughed bitterly. "You did some good," she replied. "You said so yourself. You helped folks." "I was like a secret carnival that came to town. All those people wanted something from me. Some wanted to keep me forever, some wanted to hang me as the devil. Mostly they just wanted a little help. But there was so many of them..." His voice trailed off, disappearing in a whisper, and Kathy watched his knuckles whiten as they tightened around the wood. She reached out, placed her hand on his head. "Don't talk about it no more," she said. "Don't think about it no more." They sat that way, and the deep afternoon sun lit them, until the dull metal thunder of an old transmission broke the reverie. Kathy looked up quickly, pulled her hand back and as the old truck pulled into the driveway beside them. The old man slipped out of the driver's seat like a chill wind through grass. A cap shaded his eyes, but Kathy could see by the tilt of his head that his gaze never left them as he rounded the truck to the bed, lifting the bag of seed onto his shoulder. He threw it by the shed door. "'Afternoon, Kathy." "'Afternoon, Mr. Jenkins," Kathy demurred, lowering her eyes beneath his stare. But she knew it wasn't her he was observing. Bobby never raised his head. "I passed by the store, thought I'd pick up the seed for you on the way." "Most kind of you," she said. "I'm still waiting for the subsidy check. Can I pay you later?" "No hurry," Jenkins answered. He made no motion to leave. "How'd you fare in the storm?" she said, groping for a smile. "Oh, it got me well enough. Got my sons out doing clean up at our place, I was just going to check on the crew at the Pit." A rumble shook the clear sky, and Jenkins looked up quickly. "Sounds like it may start up again, I'd best be on my way." Kathy nodded as he touched the brim of his cap and climbed into the truck. Bobby was in the house before the gravel had settled. Kathy glanced quickly at the sky and followed him. He shoved food quickly into his pack, whatever came into his fingers, and stopped only long enough to slap a few crumpled bills on the table. "What's wrong?" she said. "He recognized me, Kat. I gotta go." "How do you know? He didn't say anything." "He said he was going down to the Pit. That's what he used to call my dad's farm before he bought it out." "That doesn't prove anything. And so what, so he knows you're here. Big deal. I don't care." "I do! I've gotta go. You don't understand anything. You can't understand." "Try me!" "What we were doing today, I like it. It felt good, it felt...comfortable." "That's bad?" "I don't have the luxury of being comfortable anymore! I have to keep moving." He suddenly clutched his head, his hands coming up in twisted claws to grab his temples, and she caught him as he swayed. "Do you want some aspirin?" "Won't do any good. Can't cure what's wrong with my head." He sobbed suddenly, a small, pathetic sound. "Jesus, Kat, sometimes I think I'm going crazy." "Don't talk that way," she hushed him like a child. "You got a gift from God. You haven't saved the world maybe, but you've helped people, you made their lives, just for a year, or a day, or a minute even, a little easier." "I killed a man, Kat." She sat back, stunned, chewing her lip as she watched him huddle in the chair, his hands over his face. "He probably deserved it." "He didn't deserve it! He was just some kid, and I got mad and it just came out. I wasn't even thinking about it. And it won't go away, it's always screaming in my head, it's like living inside a tornado. I'm so tired, and it won't shut up, it just gets louder every time it happens, and I'm afraid it's gonna get so loud I won't be able to hear myself. It's just gonna throw me right out of myself and all that'll be left is this thing made of wind and lightning." He fell, collapsed and sank into a tight ball on the floor, gasping, tears falling from his grey eyes. "I dream about it at night. I'm afraid to go to sleep." She reached out tentatively, touched his hair and drew him close as he didn't resist, cradling his head on her shoulder. "You go to sleep, Bobby," she whispered. "You go to sleep and I'll keep you safe." He mumbled into her shoulder. "Why did I ever leave here, leave you?" "You know I never loved anybody the way I do you." "Did," he corrected with a little smile. "Do." He sat up, pushing her back, but kept his hand on her shoulder. "What are you saying." She shrugged nervously. "Nothing. Just what I said." They sat in silence for a moment, joined by his arm, and she watched the thoughts flicker in his mind. He leaned in slowly and hesitated, letting her bring her lips to him if she wanted to. She did. After a time they went upstairs. Still later, they fell asleep, wrapped like vines around each other, still drinking the moist wine of each other's lips. ~ They awoke to a deep pulse of sound, like a rattling heartbeat that slowly brought Kathy back to life. She opened her eyes, letting in a grey morning broken by the shadow of Bobby as he skittered across the room, pulling his clothes on. The pounding continued, coming from below. She looked at Bobby, and he met her eyes; fear shone in him like a flickering candle, and all her disjointed senses converged. She sprang through the door, her feet never touching the floor of the bedroom, and glided down the staircase. The front door bowed beneath the fist heaved at it, and she pulled the door open, dodging backward as the fist came down again. Half a dozen men, men whose families she brunched with after church on Sundays, who smiled at her in the street, loaned her equipment or credit when days were hard, stood on her porch, and draped over the forearm of each hung a shotgun. One uniformed figure stood among them, drawing its arm back from the aborted knock to push the hat further up on its high forehead. "Hello, Mike," she said. He did not even fake a smile. "Can I come in, Kathy?" She pulled her robe closer around her body, shrinking before the men all, like Sheriff Ballentine, with jaws cut in granite and faces of steel. She dug her feet in the carpet. "As a matter of fact, no." "I won't beat around the bush," Ballentine sighed. "Jenkins recognized him." He waited, but she held her ground in silence. "I'm gonna have to insist." "Let me see a warrant!" "I'm just trying to do my job, Kathy." "You used to be his friend." "He killed a man!" Ballentine's blood rushed to his face, Kathy could almost feel the heat from where she stood, could see the veins straining against the thin flesh of his neck. "Dammit, are you going to let me by, or do I have to go over you!" Before she could answer a cry cut between them, ringing out from the corner of the house, pulling Ballentine toward as he spun on his heel. "He's back here! He's getting away!" The group of men dove from the porch in pursuit, and Kathy half expected to hear baying as they headed around the corner of the house, the guns closing in a rapid snare beat of clicks. She turned quickly, dashed upstairs, hoping they'd been mistaken, praying in a steady monosyllabic stream that Bobby had not been so foolish, all thought drowned out in her frantically rising mantra, "godgodgodgodgod." The room was empty. She turned, almost hurtling the steps, stumbling and clawing her way to the back door and out beneath the thickening clouds. ~ He did not turn and look, did not think, simply kept lifting one foot after the other, slogging through the heavy soil. Distantly, behind him, he could hear shouts, but they came to him like a dream, faded and unreal, and he pressed forward. "Stop, Bobby!" The shout sounded close behind him, and then he did turn, and saw the short stocky form of Mike Ballentine churning toward him. Bobby almost stopped, his hand already rising in greeting, but his eye filled with the badge stuck on Mike's hat, the shining gold blinding him. He dropped his hand and pushed ahead faster. The report of a gunshot sent him sprawling, diving into the mud with his face as if he might chew his way to freedom. He rolled quickly, struggling to his feet and facing Mike. The sheriff stood grinning, his gun pointed straight up, shooting holes in the sky. In reply, a thick rain began to fall. Mike strode toward him slowly. "Mike! Mike, we're friends!" "That don't mean squat." "It wasn't my fault. It was an accident!" "Then tell it to the jury." "You bastard, it wasn't my fault!" A scream broke out of him, a harsh yell of anguish and despair that ripped the muscles of his throat, and he heaved the pack at Mike, watching it spin through the air. Mike's hands came up reflexively, knocking the pack aside and grabbing feebly as his gun, slick with rain, followed it down into the mud, disappearing. The rain grew harder, and Bobby simply stood, letting it wash over him in torrents, as Mike scrabbled through the mire, throwing handfuls of it around him as he searched. He slapped the water in frustration, looked up at Bobby. A snarl rolled across his lips, and he launched himself, his head driving into Bobby's stomach as both of them toppled into the expanding puddles. His fingers danced up Bobby's face, knotted themselves in his hair, pulling his head forward and back. slamming it into the ground again and again until Bobby's hand shot up hard under his chin, forced his head back. They rose like a single beast, bodies wrapped around each other until Bobby pushed out hard, holding Mike away at arm's length, barely able to see him through the deluge that surrounded them. "Mike, please." Mike hesitated, gaping at the other man, detecting something in him, and for a moment his muscles relaxed, his fist dropped to his side. Bobby began to smile, relaxing his grip. And Mike's fist slammed into his mouth, his eye, his nose, bludgeoning again and again. Pink-stained water ran streaming down his face, bubbled out of his open mouth as he screamed. "No. No! NO!" Lightning bolts danced across the sky, came screaming down from the clouds and detonated in the field around the two men like mortar fire, throwing chunks of earth into the sky, a continuous barrage. The posse of men, panting as they slid to a halt a dozen yards away, backed off, cowering and glancing in fear at the skies as the bolts came crashing down around them. They tried to advance again, but a curtain of lightning held them back. Half the men broke and ran for their cars, dropping their guns in the mud as they fled. Beneath the two men the puddles sparked and crackled, water and hot earth raining down around them as Mike shrank beneath Bobby, beneath the animal rage that burst from his broken face. Bobby's fist came down on him, his eyes not even looking where the blows landed, pounded into his face again and again. Mike looked up from between expanding lids, begging, but there was no longer anyone there to accept his supplication. "NOOOO!" One bolt fell from heaven, the sound of Armageddon trailing behind it, a blue white spear of energy that slammed into the two men. The world fell silent. The posse stopped, staring, and Kathy, racing up from behind them, her bathrobe glued to her skin and her legs thick with mud, slid to a halt. Bobby stood, Mike's limp and burned body still clutched in his hands, staring down at the dead man's face. The body dangled in his grip, lifeless, used up, a broken toy, and a look of horror darted across his features then faded away, and a void replaced it, a complete and utter nothingness. He slowly lifted his head, gazing wide eyed through the rain at the gathering. Kathy gasped. Skin hung from his face in charred strips, blackened and smoking. The hair had singed off to the scalp, and beyond in places, blood seeping up through the burnt cracks and washing away. Trailers of steam rose from his body and his clothing. He stared at them, his lip curling and twitching into a snarl and he opened his mouth. A scream came out, a wailing, an unhuman sound, the sound of hurricane winds. Lightning broke from the sky and came plummeting down, thunder rolled around his shoulders and he still screamed, heard even above the reawakened storm, his head thrown back and his mouth stretched open wider, wider, the pounding rain washing over him as he howled, his eyes spitting demented fire, a mad god. He dropped the empty husk of Mike Ballentine into the mud, took one step toward the men, his eyes looking through them, singeing their souls, and one peal of metallic thunder drowned out the rest. Bobby Ferring dropped to the ground. Kathy stared. She stared at the crumpled form, her eyes traced the path back across the yards to the still smoking barrel in the hands of the man beside her, the gun still raised, his jaw still set, his finger still squeezed tightly around the trigger. "Oh God, no." She ran, dropped to her knees beside the burnt and hollow figure and gently laid his head in her lap, running her hand over his face, wiping away the charred skin. His eyes were calm, and he looked up at her. He might have smiled, if he'd had the strength. But he just looked, and slowly his eyes wandered away from her, fixing on the sky high above them, and stopped. "Please, no. Please, no," was all she could say. She looked up imploringly at the men, their arms hanging by their sides, their shoulders drooping. A rifle fell into the water, hissed as its barrel cooled, and they all simply stared back at her, as she held his head in her lap and wept. Overhead, slowly, the sun began to break through the clouds. ~ The End~