Can Spring Be Far Behind?
A short story of about 3300 words
Brian was thinking about spaceships.
He sat at his typewriter squinting at the fresh sheet of paper he’d struggled to roll into position. The dark smudges at what would soon be the page’s margins bothered him. Since there was nothing that got his mind churning like the swelling charge of a stark white page, he had to adjust to working within soiled boundaries. But then again, there wasn’t much that passed through Brian’s hands these days that didn’t come away unclean.
His hands.
Could he still call them hands?
He held them out in front of him, their cotton bandages yellowed and tearing, soaked with blood and grime. The duct tape that secured the bandages was rolling up at the edges, frosted with dust and hair on the exposed sticky bits; the length of twine that held the tape in place was frayed and unraveling. The three outside fingers on both hands were gone, the wounds cauterized at the knuckle. All that was left of the human flesh was a full thumb on his left hand and a half thumb on his right. But he’d at least provided himself with pointer fingers—though he really couldn’t call them fingers anymore.
In place of his left pointer was a warthog tusk that had once been the handle of a cane. It was fastened with thin strips of leather wrapped around the base of the tusk, crisscrossed over his palm, looped around his wrist, and bound in a square knot. In place of its right-hand counterpart was a long, slender, blown glass dildo, studded with emerald beads, with a curve at its tip that he assumed was for reaching one of those hard-to-reach and harder-to-find spots he’d once read about in a magazine.
Neither was as good as its predecessor, but their arched shapes and heft enabled him to type. And that’s all Brian really cared about anymore. Typing and spaceships.
And Jurgen.
Jurgen!
He’d been so busy wrangling the paper into the machine and imagining the frenetic crushed glass glitter of a furball of star fighters and plasma-gunned battleships that he’d actually forgotten about Jurgen. Who had been gone now…how long?
Jurgen always said never to take more than one or two foraging trips a month, because more increased the chances of encountering others. The last time Brian got careless it cost him several fingers, and Jurgen more than that. And had the marauders who had cornered them not turned their blades on one another over their dinner of flesh, they would likely have carved even more off them both to roast over their garbage can fire.
And it was Jurgen who always said they were never to spend more than an hour or two outside because any more caused the skin to blister and burn.
But had it been an hour yet?
Their last reliable clock had finally stopped ticking. And it was pointless to try telling time by the sun. For all the murky sky could tell them, their star might have leapt out of its system in search of a new and more deserving set of planets to light.
A metallic shriek from down the hall jumbled the thoughts in Brian’s head.
For a brief moment it scared him. But then he remembered the sound was the lonely knell of the heavy fire door leading to the stairwell. It meant Jurgen had returned.
Then it occurred to Brian that it might not be Jurgen, and the thought made him tremble. He was relieved to hear the odd, familiar knock, thud, knock rhythm of a gait that could only belong to his friend. Brian felt a warm wave of calm wash over him.
He watched as the column of deadbolts crunched, scraped and popped out of place from top to bottom. The dull brass knob turned, and the heavy door swung open.
The doorway seemed to shrink around Jurgen’s bulky frame, made bulkier still by the three stuffed coffee bean sacks slung over his shoulder. He looked like a pile of overused rags, wearing layer upon layer of grimy wool sweaters, tweed blazers, and gabardine trench coats. Flakes of ash clung to everything, reminding Brian of the rare childhood morning when he had awakened to freshly fallen snow.
Beneath a charred fedora, his face was wrapped in the soiled legs of herringbone patterned pants, his eyes covered by a pair of blistered ski goggles, their mirror lenses marred by a spider web of cracks. On his right foot he wore a parched leather combat boot, the rusted steel toe poking through, the sole nearly worn to nothing. In place of his left foot and lower leg was the scuffed and dinged barrel of the same cane whose handle now served as one of Brian’s fingers.
Jurgen reached up with his free hand, clad in a welder’s glove, and raised the goggles. He drew the pant legs away from his mouth, revealing a broad smile of rotting teeth rimmed in crusty, deeply fissured lips.
“Honey, I’m home!” he called.
Brian threw his head back and laughed a big, husky laugh that almost drowned out the wet rattle in his throat. He long ago gave up trying to clear his flooded throat, and the rattle now shadowed his every word like some grotesque accompanying instrument.
Jurgen chortled along with Brian. He shook off most of the ash and turned to close the door, sliding the half dozen deadbolts back in place.
“And I come bearing gifts!” he said, turning back to Brian.
He slipped his shoulder out from under his load and swung the bulging sacks onto a long oak table near the efficiency kitchen. Brian grinned in anticipation as Jurgen waved his arms over the bags like a magician.
“First, I bring you…,” Jurgen said, pausing. As if on command, Brian began a drum roll on his writing desk. Jurgen waited a few seconds, then announced, “Dinner!”
With that he grabbed the bottom end of the bag to his left and turned it over. Nearly twenty rusted and dented cans of food thudded onto the table, some dropping onto the linoleum floor. Brian’s eyes followed one of the cans as it rolled toward him and stopped at his dilapidated soccer cleats. He looked at Jurgen in awe and opened his mouth to speak. But Jurgen brought a gloved finger to his lips, so Brian subsided.
“Please, ladies and gentlemen, do try and hold your approbation and applause until the end of the show,” he said, winking.
Jurgen limped to the bag farthest to the right. He reached in, pretending to fumble, looking confused as he shook his arm wildly. Then he went still, his eyes opening wide.
“My friend,” he said, “I bring you…the shoulders of giants!”
He jerked his arm from the bag and threw a hand towards the ceiling. He held a fat book with a worn, hunter green jacket, the author’s name inset in heavy, gold letters.
“Homer!” Brian shouted, bringing his palms together.
Jurgen slammed the volume down on the table and reached into the bag again. With each book he withdrew, Brian shouted the name on the cover.
“Dante! Chaucer! Cervantes! Tolstoy! Dickens! Hemmingway! Shakespeare! Another Homer! Tolkien! Twain! Goethe! Roth! Aust…”
Brian furrowed his brow and squinted at the book. His mouth hanging dumbly open, he slowly shifted his eyes to Jurgen.
“Austen?” he asked.
Jurgen furrowed his brow as well, and slowly craned his neck to look up at the book in his hand.
“How the hell did that get in there?” he roared, and launched the book into a dark corner of the room.
They both laughed and continued their game until the books had been pulled from bag and were sandwiched between a pair of tin cans. Jurgen passed his fingers through the air above them, moving delicately, as if he thought his motion might cause them to fall like dominos.
“All the inspiration you could ever need, my friend,” he said. “Immortal themes, archetypical archetypes, mythological yarns ripe for re-imagining, cautionary fables aching for modernization…a whole universe of material that’s just begging to peek through your prose in obscure references that will transform your work into erudite brilliance!”
“Erudite brilliance,” echoed Brian, giddy at the thought.
“And the jewel among jewels, the piece de resistance,” intoned Jurgen, reaching back into the bag and drawing out the one remaining book. He thrust it into the air as he did with the ones before.
“Behold!” he screamed exultantly.
Again Brian crinkled his brow. He read the title hesitantly.
“Adventures in…Literary Criticism?” he said, making it sound like a question.
Jurgen’s smile didn’t fade.
“Oh, I know it’s as befuddling a title as there ever was, but I’ve thumbed through it myself, and trust me, my friend, the pearls of wisdom in here will positively illuminate!”
Brian raised his eyebrows.
“Really?” he asked.
“Brian, you have no idea! The perspective. The insight. The things I could tell you…”
“Tell me! Tell me!”
Jurgen brushed his thumb over the pages, fanning them.
“Oh, where should I start?” he said, rolling his eyes as if searching for the answer. “Ah, of course! Take, for example, any two gentlemen, any two gentle male souls in the long and winding history of literature with more than a passing fondness for each other…”
Jurgen paused as if he’d asked a question and was waiting for Brian to respond. Brian stared up at him, eyebrows still high on his forehead.
“Yes?” Brian asked.
“Gay.”
Brian’s jaw dropped.
“What?”
“Gay!”
Brian brought a hand up, and scratched his head with his warthog tusk.
“Really?”
“Oh absolutely, my friend! Take Hamlet and Horatio. Holmes and Watson. Ishmael and Tashtego. George and Lenny. All of them…”
“Gay?” Brian said.
“As the day is long!”
“Wow,” Brian said, still scratching his head.
“Wow indeed, my friend! And it doesn’t end there. Nope. Gay doesn’t just stick to the page. It was all over the movies, positively rampant! Same with television!”
“Really?”
“Shoot!”
Brian pursed his lips as he thought for a moment.
“Ralph and Norton,” he said.
“Gay!”
“Butch and Sundance.”
“Gay!”
“Lenny and Squiggy.”
“Gay!”
“Fred and Barney.”
“Especially Barney!”
“Caine and Connery in…”
“Are you kidding? It might as well have been called ‘The Queen Who Would Be King’!”
Brian was about to laugh when Jurgen launched the book into Austen territory and thrust his arms out in front of him, palms down. Slowly, he lowered them, as if hushing an audience. Feeling the weight of Jurgen’s hands, Brian sank back into his chair and fell silent.
“And now for my denouement,” Jurgen said.
Holding Brian’s gaze, Jurgen opened the mouth of the last sack. He reached in with both hands and paused. Then, closed his eyes, and slowly withdrew.
Brian took a deep breath.
“Whoa,” he said, drawing out the vowel in a whisper that sounded like the wind rustling through trees.
Resting in each of Jurgen’s gloved palms was a taxidermied cat, one a chubby, tortoiseshell Calico sprawled on its side, the other a stout, slate-colored British shorthair sitting proudly, chest out.
“What’s a writer without cats?” asked Jurgen.
Brian pursed his lips and shook his head subtly, his eyes watering up.
“I don’t…,” he started.
“My friend,” said Jurgen, “you don’t have to.”
Jurgen gently set the cats on the table.
The two friends stood there a moment, smiling at one another across the silence. Then Jurgen threw his hands in the air.
“Now if only we can find you a drug addiction and a healthy case of manic depression, you’ll have enough inspiration for a lifetime!”
*
Brian threw back his head and pressed his hands to his stomach. But what should have been a laugh erupted instead as a cough that wrenched his head forward, tearing through the air like a jet.
Jurgen hopped on his good foot around the table, reaching Brian as quickly as he could. He raised the galvanized steel bucket at Brian’s feet under his chin, just as Brian’s cheeks filled to capacity.
The ruin of Brian’s lungs spewed from between his lips. The fluid was the color and consistency of motor oil, splashing into the bucket with a low, hollow rumble. The air reeked with the smell of tar and iron.
For the next few minutes the retching ebbed and flowed, waves of tension racking Brian’s body, the foul, viscous liquid filling the bucket near to the brim. Jurgen fought his reflex to gag as he held it in place, brushing his friend’s matted hair away from his face, rubbing his back in soft circles.
“It’s all right, buddy,” he kept repeating. “You’re gonna’ be all right.”
When the fit subsided and Brian could breathe without hacking, Jurgen carried the bucket to the bathroom and dumped it down the shower drain. He held it upside down until the long string of black slowed to a trickle, then to a drip. He wiped the rim with a rag pulled off the towel rack and brought it back to the table.
“And that’s the end of that,” said Jurgen.
“Yeah,” Brian said wearily.
“You ok, buddy?” he said, resting his hand on Brian’s head.
“Sure,” Brian said shrugging. “Could use a drink, though.”
Jurgen scrunched up his face.
“I’m sorry, buddy. All we have is whiskey.”
Brian winced at the word.
“I know. It burns. It’s just,” Jurgen shook his head, “all we have.”
Brian closed his eyes and nodded.
But on the way to the cupboard a can of food at Brian’s feet caught Jurgen’s eye. He braced himself on Brian’s chair and bent to retrieve it. He gave it a shake, hearing the promise of liquid within.
“Hey, buddy,” he said, smiling. “I think you’re in luck.”
Brian opened his eyes and stared at the can in Jurgen’s hand, its contents sloshing.
“Tell you what,” said Jurgen, “I’ll get started on our feast. You get some writing done.”
The pain seemed to leave Brian’s face, his eyes widening and brightening.
“I’d like that,” he said in a hushed voice.
“Perfect!” Jurgen spun around on his good foot.
Leaving Brian at his writing table, he headed for the bedroom to remove his outer layers of clothing. He disrobed down to a filthy v-neck undershirt and a pair of sweatpants held up by a shoelace. He tried to ignore his reflection in the wall mirror, his gossamer frame and the eggplant colored legions that covered his chest and arms, when he heard the crunch and jangle of Brian’s opening line.
It made him smile.
Rummaging through his closet, he found his toolbox and headed back to the kitchen with hammer and screwdriver in hand.
As Jurgen punched through the perimeter of the lid, Brian typed furiously, the mechanical music of their endeavors filling the room. When Brian needed a new sheet of paper, Jurgen fed it into the machine. And when Jurgen finished opening the first can, he gave it to Brian to soothe his throat with a few swallows of beet juice.
Jurgen was midway through the second can when Brian threw his hands in the air.
“Finished!” he shouted.
“Wow, that was fast!” said Jurgen, hobbling to the doorway to gaze upon his rapt-looking friend.
“Yeah, it just kinda…came to me.”
“May I?”
*
Brian blushed, still shy about Jurgen reading his work in spite of their many years together.
“Okay,” he agreed, letting his smiling face drop to his chest.
Jurgen pulled the last page from the typewriter and slipped it under the stack on the table. He sat next to his friend. Picking up the manuscript, he read the title aloud.
“The Spaceship From Another World,” he said, dramatically. “My friend, consider me hooked from the start.”
And he was.
Jurgen read Brian’s story as it was meant to be read. He laughed when it was funny, sighed when it was poignant, squinted when it was complicated, and dropped his jaw when it was amazing. When he finished, he set the manuscript down and folded his arms across his chest. It was a few minutes before he spoke.
“Brian, it’s wonderful.”
“You like it?” Brian asked.
“Like it? I don’t like it…I love it.”
Brian brought his hands to his face.
“Really, Brian, you need to send this one out. And I mean immediately.”
“Really?” Brian asked. “I mean…now?”
“Why wait?”
Brian shrugged.
“You have your name on every page?” asked Jurgen.
“I do.”
“And they’re all numbered?”
“They are.”
“Well all right, my friend. Let’s do this!”
Jurgen took the first page and began making a series of folds and creases, running his fingernail along each one to make them sharp and precise. He did the same with the remaining eleven pages, setting down each creation beside the one before. When he was finished, he and Brian sat before a squadron of a dozen airplanes.
“They’re beautiful,” sighed Brian, his face full of wonder.
“They sure are,” said Jurgen. “And ready for takeoff.”
Jurgen stood and walked over to where a pair of heavy green drapes hid a large double-hung window. Straining, he drew them aside.
For a fleeting second, Brian thought he felt warm rays pouring into the room, bathing his face in buttery sunlight. But there was only gray, cold slate gray—the only color the world outside had left to offer.
*
Jurgen popped the latches and pushed upward, his sinews and ligaments and veins frighteningly defined in his gaunt arms. The window jerked opened with violent crack. Outside, the wind keened, mixed with the sound of falling debris, of rivers coursing down avenues, of the howls of men-turned-monsters.
Jurgen walked back to the table. He raked the planes off with his arm, and cradled them to his chest.
One by one, Jurgen pulled the paper planes from between his forearm and chest, and launched them into the roiling air. When the final page was in flight, he stuck his head out the window.
He followed the sharp ivory shapes, his eyes darting from page to page as they dove, soared and spiraled in the briefest of moments before disappearing into the quivering penumbra of gray.
Long after the pages were gone, Jurgen still hung his head out the window. He heard Brian’s tortured hacking through the omnipresent groan of the world.
Jurgen drew his head inside. He turned to Brian, tears spilling over his eyelids, streaking his cheeks.
Brian stared back at him through cloudy, bloodshot eyes, his lids half-closed as if starved for sleep. He held his bucket to his chest, catching the fat stream of black that flowed over his bottom lip and hung from his chin in ropey strands.
“Do you think they’ll like it?” Brian asked, his voice a weary croak just above a whisper.
Jurgen wiped his cheeks and forced a smile.
“My friend,” he said, “how can they do anything but love it?”
Brian smiled back at his friend. The tension from the coughing fit eased in his neck, shoulders and chest, allowing him to sink into his chair. He let his chin fall to his chest, and closed his eyes, drawing slow, faint breaths as he drowsed.
Jurgen watched for a moment as his friend rested. An odd notion came to him, and he chuckled to himself.
“Gay,” he whispered, shaking his head.
He turned back to the window, resting his hands on the top rail. He knew closing it wouldn’t be easy. And that it wouldn’t, in the end, really matter.
But he closed it just the same.
Originally published in Lore vol.2, no.2 – November, 2012