I am giving up on the expression "Awesome!" It is used to an
embarrassing automatic degree. I would just as soon use a nothing
expression such as "The Cat Was Pleased." In fact, whenever I
find something to my delight (the more transitory the better)
but can't be put to the trouble of elaborating (more or less why),
count on my contribution: "The Cat Was Pleased."
Now on with our story.
For a night on the town, complete with dance and light
conversation, a Troder holds the least promise of all possible
partners. You might call one impossible for anything but realizing
new depths in miserable experience. It can't be helped. Even a
rock has more pizazz. Ladies, you'll want to move along.
Troders are the very definition of gnarly, uncouth and boring,
tossed together and served at room temperature upon a bed of
nasty sauce. For you connoisseurs of unruly behavior out there
if your first response is "the cat was pleased," be warned;
everyone, I mean every-one, tires of a Troder's act, eventually.
It might interest to note that Troders know nothing of how they
come to be. They have no sense of family history. Nor do they
care. Each one woke up one day -- a Troder.
On the opposite hand, a Woman of the Forest, ever faithful to
her sense of what's what, can always smell when a Troder strays
into the neighborhood. And, she is seldom long in finding out
his business.
Tom Troder had met no Witches in the new neighborhood -- not
yet anyway -- but he planned to check that off his list as
soon. Work's work.
Tom Troder grunted with no small amount of meh. He often grunted
in this way, shuffling about in his ragged slippers. Meh. It was
a handy utilitarian expression. He always woke with a disposition
by anyone's standard crabby. True to the moral responsibility
that crabby is as crabby does he thought it prime time to attend
to his correspondence.
Whenever dealing with his letters, he replied without reading
the letter first -- much less ever. All Troders spend their
lives as perfect authorities on "just being that way." He sat
down at the table, picked up a letter and thoughtfully rubbed
the stubble on his chin.
It was from old Stanley Troder, back east. They'd not seen each
other for over a hundred years. Tom lay the unopened letter down
and chewed thoughtfully on his pencil's eraser and swallowed. I
should note it all Troders spend their lives as exemplary
authorities on "just being that way." So, he scratched out his
reply: "Dear, Stanley, drop dead you moron. Yours truly, Tom."
A Troder's cave is littered with the remnants of a thousand
misdoings done. You can find them tossed into the corners and
strewn over the shelves. But let there be no mistake, this is
a matter of exacting aesthetics, and like fine art everything
piled in the corners and on the shelves was yearly appraised and
thoroughly inventoried. They were in fact old gnawed over bones,
too full of reminiscence to do away with. This is a literal fact
and no mere analogy toward something like a grudge.
A Troder does not hold a grudge, never has. If pressed on the
topic, he would deny to your face he'd ever even heard of such
a thing.
"I found this unsanitary specimen on the kitchen counter. I
believe it is yours."
It was the Woman of the Forest. She walked into the room as if she
owned the place. That was her magic. She held up a bone splinter
Tom used for a toothpick. It was as she said, unsanitary. It
went with him in his travel kit everywhere. And she seemed to
imply it would be the death of him someday. Tom sneered as
a matter of due course. The moment the Woman appeared he
was immediately reminded of the driving concept behind
mortality. And rightly so. It was their business together. He
sneered again.
His upper lip got hung up on a snaggle-tooth and there it
stayed. "You were not invited," he said.
Firmly rooted as the tree of life, with just as many birds in
her hair, she held the bone splinter up. "This must go."
Tom could get barking mad on an instant's notice. It was too
late. She was already out the door. He followed to prevent any
further mischief.
Sitting down on a stone bench, she laid the bone toothpick
to one side. Tom Troder stood nearby pretending to ignore
the whole business. She placed her hand over the offensive
article. Tom Troder sternly kept the business in his peripheral
vision. The Woman was trouble. They all were, he thought --
except Cave-Witches -- on second thought, Cave-Witches were too.
She lifted her hand away. What was that? He could not help but
turn his head. Instead of his favorite toothpick there now lay a
dead bird. He could have sworn it had once been a bone splinter
because picking his teeth with a dead bird was a silly idea.
"Meh," he said. But deep down inside Tom Troder did not like
how things were shaping up. You could tell.
Like the wind on the moon she took a deep breath and closed her
eyes. The poetic injustice of it all -- he knew without a doubt
now -- his time had come. And betrayed by a toothpick. He stood
transfixed and fascinated by the dead bird. Its claws were curled
and its yellow beak stood agape. "Hmmm?" he wondered to himself
followed by a "Mehh." I should note this was his best of Mehs,
a full one-hundred percent discount of the whole business.
When the Woman of the Forest spoke, she spoke not to one
Tom Troder, but to all things, so that the hills fairly
rippled. "Feathers -- smooth and gray, shall not drop away --
while this breast yet holds the blush of morning rise."
The Troder's face felt strange.
"Does not every day die only to be reborn? That is the law,"
she said.
This was it for him. She had the way of sun-shine warming a
cliff face -- Plink! A pebble tear slid down his course cheek --
which she caught -- becoming a glittering diamond in her palm.
She balled up her fist and blew a breath over it. Opening her
hand once again, there she held a tiny white larvae. "Ah-ha! I
thought you were in there." She placed the little thing into the
open mouth of the bird where it disappeared. "Now where shall
we bury this?" She turned to Tom.
The Troder could not say. The light of morning glinted upon his
furrowed brow. The mud slogging through his veins had dried up,
and he forever had turned to stone.
Upon the stone bench, the robin fluttered awake. It took one
look around and darted off, bobbing over the forest floor with
each stroke, belonging to the day.
