authorjeffbaker

                                     Love and Languish for His Sake

                                                   By Jeff Baker

            They stood there staring down at the boy lying on the forest floor.

“I found him right over here,” Pete said.

The two men were just about a mile from Chaz’s parents house. Chaz had taken Pete out to show where he used to play when he was a kid, living near a forest. They’d wandered around to see if they could find where Pete had tried to build a treehouse to see if any of it was still there. Then Chaz heard Pete hollering. He ran over to where Pete was standing.

On the ground was a young man, maybe eighteen, eyes closed, pale. No sign of breathing.

“You think he’s dead?” Pete asked. “He didn’t wake up when I yelled.”

“No,” Chaz said. “I don’t think he’s dead.” Chaz was staring; there was something familiar about the figure, in his jeans, boots, suspenders at his sides, skinny body, feathery texture to the hair, lips that…He’d seen him before, he knew it. Chaz looked up at the sky through the trees, remembering. He’d even seen the knife at the kid’s belt before.

“Should we wake him up?” Pete asked.

“I don’t think so,” Chaz said. “I think he’s a fairy.”

Pete gave Chaz a glare that dripped of unspoken sarcasm.

“No,” Chaz said grinning and kissing Pete. “Not that. I mean a fairy. A fae. A spirit being. I think I saw him before. A long time ago.”

“How long ago?” Pete asked.

“I was about seven years old the last time I saw him,” Chaz said. “It was about twenty years ago. It was a summer afternoon and I was running through these woods and I saw him just lying there like he is now. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.” He let out a long breath of air. “I imagine I’d had feelings like that before but this was the first time I really consciously realized what I was feeling. I was drawn to him, but,” Chaz shook his head. “There was something unnatural about him. So I ran.”

“Did he chase after you?” Pete asked.

“No,” Chaz said. “I ran to my Grandfather’s. He lived near us back then, so I ran there, out of breath and tried to tell him I’d found a dead boy in the woods. Grandpa had me take him to where I’d found the boy on the ground and he wasn’t there. There was grass growing there and it didn’t look flattened like it would have been if someone had been lying there. My Grandfather looked at me and asked me to describe the boy. When I did, he told me that if I ever saw him again I was not to touch him or even go near him.”

Pete stared back at the young man on the forest floor.

“What I remember most vividly about that afternoon is the knife hanging from the boy’s belt.” Chaz pointed. “That same knife right there.”

Impulsively, Pete reached down for the knife. Chaz grabbed his hand and pulled him away.

“That’s something I read years later,” Chaz said. “If you partake of the food of the fairy folk, you become trapped in their world.”

Pete and Chaz stared down at the boy on the ground for a few minutes.

“Let’s get out of here,” Pete said.

“Yeah,” Chaz said. “I’d much rather be in our world.”

 “Since when do you use words like partake?” Pete asked with a grin as they walked out of the woods.

Chaz grinned and squeezed his hand. “Since I get to walk back home with my husband.”

They did not look back at the forest.

                                    —end—

                                      The River of Birds

                                            By Jeff Baker

            At night he rode around the city on the River of Birds.

            It usually happened just after dark. Usually in Fall. The birds would flock and fly around the houses. Vinnie had been sitting on the roof just outside his bedroom window when the birds had swarmed by in the dusk. He’d felt them calling to him; he’d understood and stepped out off the roof onto the birds. Barefoot. In another moment, he was soaring with them around the houses, as if he was standing on a fluttering flying carpet. He learned quickly that he had to crouch like the surfers he’d seen in pictures, making himself more aerodynamic. One of the first times he had fallen off into the bushes. Luckily that time the birds had been swooping low and the bushes were thick. He was fifteen now and was more experienced. At night he would fly around the city, see the looping highway and the lights beneath him, and be eye-to-eye with the darkened windows of the few tall buildings downtown. Usually, he made it back home, but one night the birds swooped low by the lake and dispersed. He’d learned to carry a pair of sneakers with him in case he found himself having to walk anywhere. He ran as he saw the birds flocking and swooping over the lake in the near dark and dove for the flock. In an instant he was swept up and into the sky again.

            When it was cold he had to make sure he bundled up to ride the bird river, sometimes only for a short turn around the neighborhood, shivering in his bare feet. Sometimes he avoided the trips in winter until spring. In summer, the river formed only infrequently, and these weren’t always crows. One night, Vinnie had been out on a river of bats, which flew erratically and dispersed too easily, chasing after bugs. But the birds still came and he could sometimes ride them until late evening, sometimes high in the sky sometimes out of the city over the countryside. On those nights, he sometimes heard a voice calling to him from above and he would look upward.

            There above him streaked the starry Milky Way. On it rode a boy of his own age, but not quite his own species. They smiled and the Milky Way boy called out: “Ho, there! Join me on the starry ride and we can see the universe!” But Vinnie could not control where the birds went and they would not take him high enough to join the stars. So, he would ride the bird river home, and ever after when he would be dozing off, he would wonder what it was like to swoop over the heavens on the Milky Way, a ride that must take centuries, not just an evening.

                                                        —end—

The Chair Will Now Read The Minutes of the Last Meeting

By Jeff Baker

“All right. All right,” she said, over the hubbub. She looked out over the assembled crowd in the wan moonlight under the trees in the park. “The monthly meeting will come to order.” She banged her bronze gavel against the bronze podium, rustled her bronze skirts and glared at one of the crowd. “Mister Murdock. Put the paper down and join us please.”

“I can’t,” the bronze man holding the bronze paper said. “It’s attached to my fingers. And I’m not Mr. Murdock, they never did a statue of him. Not even a bust. I’m Everyman.”

“Nonetheless, please pay attention. The Moon won’t be up that long. I’ll mark you as here.”

“I’m here, representing the Civil War Memorial,” said a stone figure raising his hand.

“The Sailor,” the Chairwoman said. “Nice to see you again.”

“My turn in the rotation,” he replied. “The Cavalryman and the Army Man send their regards. They remain on duty this month.”

“Good to hear,” she said. “None of the wooden carvings made it this month, I take it?”

“They are rooted to the ground, remember?” said a bronze pioneer woman.

“Oh, that’s right,” the Chairwoman said. “Now, moving quickly does anyone…”

There was a rattling and a burst of laughter as a little bronze girl in her wagon rushed past, pushed by a giggling young man in a fireman’s outfit, followed by several bronze children and dogs.

“Order! Order!” the Chairwoman said, rapping her gavel with a series of clangs. “None of this during the meeting! You’re an adult, you should know better!” This last was addressed to the fireman.

“Oh, this is the only fun I get to have!” the fireman said, tilting his hat back. “Remember, I’m the memorial to the fallen firefighters.”

“So you are,” she said. “But please, play somewhere else if you must—oh, wait! Before you go, have you heard from your twin?”

The Minuteman statue in Riverside Park dated back to 1920. The artist who had cast the bronze Firefighter’s Memorial had copied the face and build of the young stone Minuteman. The 1920’s model supposedly had been a student from the College and had been paid fifteen dollars for posing.

“The Minuteman never leaves his post,” the young fireman said.

“Marked not present,” the Chairwoman said, scribbling in the bronze book with a bronze pen. “Does anyone know of anyone else who is not present?”

“What about the Keeper?” someone called out.

“The big Indian never shows up,” someone else said.

“They call them Native Americans these days,” said the Fireman.

“How would you know about ‘these days?’” asked the Pioneer Woman.

“I was only cast three years ago,” he replied.

The Chairwoman sighed. It wasn’t a bad thing that not everybody showed up. The modern sculptures were no help, and the big steel bison by the river had charged the crowd the only time he’d attended a meeting.

“Before we get down to the business of the evening’s gathering…” she began.

“We’ll play a game of Statues,” called out the bronze Jester from the theater. Even the Chairwoman joined in the laughter that followed from bronze and stone throats. When the laughter died down, she cleared her throat and went on.

“The Chair will now read the minutes of the last meeting.”

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Fireman’s Memorial is fictional, but the other statues, bronze and stone, can be found in my hometown of Wichita, Kansas. Including the Keeper of the Plains by Native Artist Blackbear Bosin. I have included a picture of the statue that really inspired this story!