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turned, wet muzzles glinting in the moonlight, and melted
into the grass.
Larken stood there. All his life long before Nam, which
had just clarified it all his life he had longed to find this
doorway, this path that could lead him off the treadmill of
time and death.
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His legs buckled under, he dropped like lead and sat in the
deep grass, staring at the lightfield where that Someone had
stood. He found himself slowed to a synchrony with the
Earth-clock itself, and sat there unmoving as the starfield
inched across the sky. He then knew that when he returned
to his wife and children, it would be to take his leave of them
forever.
He knew he had been mocked in this revelation. Here he'd
been tramping through the night, the earnest searcher, while
the power and glory he was dogging followed him
unperceived. How long had this Someone mocked him?
How long had this Someone mocked Larken? Back through
the decades, had every cloud of crows that burst in flight
before him been, in reality, exploding in mirth at oncoming
Larken with his giant follower, the derisive god behind him?
Well, it was the gods prerogative to mock. Larken had
been shown at last. He had accrued fifty years of spiritual
hunger, poverty and nonentity and finally, it seemed, had
amassed his down payment on eternity.
Oh the price! It was an unending agony to pay, to be
denied forever dear Jolly, sweet, sweet Maxie and Jack. But it
was a father's place to die before his children, to show them,
with his calm as he steps out into the great Dark, that they
have nothing to fear, that their own path will be bearable.
How could he abide with them while they aged year by year,
and he aged no further? Far easier for them to know no more
of him beyond tonight, than to learn that he was not of their
world, and was to live beyond even his own memory of their
existence.
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So when that morning's Sun rose, Carl Larken turned
forever onto his present path, and lived in solitude.
He smiled a barbed smile now that tore his heart, and felt
the scald of bitter tears. He'd put down everything he had
that very day turned aside from his life, and the careless
god, having beckoned him, had left him hanging, utterly
alone, these three years since.
But what are years to a god? What are a man's tears? And
now the god, or perhaps the god's messenger, had touched
him between the eyes, and run a finger down his spine. Said
Yes. I am here.
Larken crushed out his coals, washed out his oatmeal pan
from the jug of water in his food locker locked everything up
and rehung it from the branch. Then he carried his mat and
sleeping bag out from under the oak to a level spot, and lay
down, still clothed, on top of the bag, lay scanning the thick
strew of stars visible through this gap in the trees.
And heard, or almost heard, that faint, clawed tread the
clothes-ghost he had conjured, coming now, drawing nearer,
coming to offer Larken what he had lived for. Coming to tell
him the price.
He realized it didn't matter whether he actually heard this
or not. Because now, after fifty-five years, he was about to
step up to his threshold and confront the god. This had been
granted, he knew it in his spine.
Strangely, the most immediate effect on him was not
jubilation, but a renewed agony at the price he had paid for
this victory. Dear Christ, his precious Jolly! His precious
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Maxie, and little Jack! Eternal exile from them! How had he
mustered the strength, the resolution?
They were his only riches, a fortune he had stumbled
blindly into, undeservingly. His and Jolly's first years together,
after he had come back, drugged and raging, from the war,
had been dissolute years. They drank and drugged and fucked
and fought. On the wings of substances, as they took wobbly
flight together, he had tried to show her his most private
faith his mad hope that time could be broken like shackles,
and a soul, a fiercely desiring soul, could burn forever.
But then priceless, accidental Maxie befell them, and Jolly
became wholly Mother overnight. Larken himself took three
more years, sullenly sucking booze and powders, before
turning to at last, and taking on his fatherhood. By then,
equally accidental Jack had arrived, and the rusty doors of
Larken's heart were forced all the way open.
In that deep, tricky torrent of parental love and nurturing,
the next fourteen years fled away. The immortal fire persisted
in Larken's inmost self, but he could not share it with his
children. He found it a faith too perilous to speak a magic he
would lose if he tried to bestow it. His children's minds grew
strong and agile, but he could not find the words. Before he
knew it, Maxie was in middle school, Jack just graduating
elementary. Behold, they had friends, passionate interests,
lives laid out before them in the world! They had already left
him when at last the god vouchsafed to beckon him. Only that
made it possible for him to renounce them.
He wiped his tears and listened to the night. The price he
had paid was past counting, but his purchase was vast. He
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had bought nothing less than this whole world, night and day,
north and south, now and forever. Was he insane, to feel this
reckless certainty? Wasn't this blasphemy? Hubris? Wouldn't
it cost him his prize?
He could not think so. This bitter joy refused to leave him.
He listened to the night, deep night now, where living things
moved quietly about their mortal business. Upslope of him,
deer moved very carefully, small-footed through the scarcely
rustling oak leaves. Far down on the two-lane he heard the
faint, awkward scritch of a skunk (awkward as possums,
skunks) beginning to cross the asphalt.
Whoops. Far down the two-lane, the beefy growl of a
grunt-mobile. Enter Man on the stage of night, roaring high,
wide and handsome in a muscle-truck a tinny sprinkle of
radio music above the roar. Closing fast, with a coming-
home-from-the-bar aura. It must be just after two....
Larken listened to the tires as it roared near, roared past
and yes, there it came, that whump-crunch-thumpa-thumpa [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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