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Trekkers Over and Around 40 |
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| Floridaze
~ Buffett, Key West, & Things Parrothead |
The
Key West Foreign Legion |
Warren Zevon | Other Ports | |
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Content: 10/4/00 The past shows Jim his future. This story takes place following "Sentinel Too" and "Sentinel Too Part Two," and was written in response to a post on the Senad mailing list, quoted below. With thanks and apologies to Pet Fly, Archaeology Magazine, and Jane Mailander, and proceeding under the assumption that forgiveness is easier to ask than permission.... Mon, 2 Oct 2000
22:33:37 -0700 (PDT) I've been reading the magazine ARCHAEOLOGY (3 guesses why I subscribed), and in the July/August one there's a photo of a dig out on a steppe somewhere in Kabul, I believe (don't have it with me now), that's uncovered an enormous grave mound, once thought to be a hill. 11 people are buried there from what seems to be a nomadic group, surrounded by covered stone pots of milk and mutton, red ochre, bronze hairpins, the works. But the most elaborate grave is for two skeletons, lying curled together like spoons, surrounded by the most elaborate grave-gifts and tools. The two are embraced like lovers. They are male and female, and are believed to have been medicine men or chiefs. You're not supposed to get misty-eyed looking at millennia-old gravesites, or at skeletons. But all I could see was that nomadic tribe's Sentinel and Guide, in their final resting place. ARCHAEOLOGY (Excerpts) Excavation of a 4,000-year-old kurgan in the Krasnodar region of southern Russia has revealed the remains of 11 people, including an embracing couple thought to be chiefs or priests ... buried with numerous offerings -- bronze tools, stone carvings, jewelry, and ceramic vessels decorated with red ocher, some of which contained food. ... the embracing couple ... were found lying on their right sides with their heads oriented toward the southwest.
It seems to me
as though I've been upon this stage before
I see those
half-familiar faces in the second row ONE STAGE BEFORE ~ Al Stewart ~~~ Jim's eyes darted left, capturing a quick glance of the man curled up at the other end of the couch. Motionless ... hunched over, knees bent and feet drawn up beneath him, tousled head bowed so that only the bottom lip caught tight in white teeth showed. One arm was wrapped around him as if he were chilled, although he sat much closer to the fire than Jim. One hand held a magazine in his lap, open to the same page that it had been open to over an hour ago, when some unknown cue had moved Jim to glance at him for the first time that night. Many subsequent glances, including the current one, had found the tableau unchanged. What the hell? The statue twitched and came to life, as if Jim's silent question had been spoken it out loud. The magazine flipped shut and was tossed onto the table. Blair unfolded himself and stood, arms tight to his sides, strained in a stretch of rigid posture. He spoke softly to Jim without looking at him. "Bed, man. Night." Short, quiet. Un-Blair-like, even in exhaustion. "Night." It was all Jim could think of to say. Blair's thick cotton socks cushioned his footsteps as he padded across the wooden floor, a gray ghost disappearing into the shadows that hugged the walls untouched by firelight or lamplight or the television's glow. Jim shivered for no reason and listened to the sounds of Blair in the bathroom, Blair going to his room, Blair pulling the doors not quite closed and Blair climbing into bed. Blair sighing and curling tightly in upon himself. What the hell? Redundant. But so much of his life had begged that question of late that Jim had begun to think of the query as a mantra, so often repeated that the words were meaningless and only the feelings the chant evoked mattered. Bemusement. Worry. Hurt. Fear. But not curiousity, for the meaningless question was also a rhetorical one. Jim Ellison knew all too intimately each X and Y that built the equation defining his life. X. Mistrust. Mistakes. Alex. Times Y. Failure. The fountain. Blair. Equals silence. Regret. Jim. This day's events had been the latest demonstration of the new relationship between Sentinel and Guide, as redefined by that silence and regret. A hostage situation gone bad and a pair of shotgun shells had combined to create the crisis; Jim's hearing, cranked up to eavesdrop on the two gang members in the convenience store, had been devastated by the blasts and left him doubled over in pain. Blair's soothing voice and hands had been there at once, offering help, but Jim had shrugged them away and struggled for control alone. Blair had backed off without further gesture or comment, as if knowing without explanation that dependency had become Jim's nightmare and Blair was now the icon of his need for distance in the name of self-sufficiency. Amazement and bitter self-recrimination warred within the Sentinel as he watched his Guide accept with sad grace his new role as a tool in Jim's self-imposed aversion therapy. It seemed that even with all that had happened between them, Blair would not leave his friend ... at least not until he felt that Jim would be all right alone. Or Jim told him to go. Whichever would come to pass, it was clear that Blair was preparing himself for exile. The boxes he'd brought back from the seedy motel he'd fled to the last time Jim had sent him away remained stacked and unopened in a corner of his small bedroom. And little that belonged to Blair had found its way back into the living room of the loft. Except, tonight, that magazine. Jim leaned forward and looked at the cover. ARCHAEOLOGY. The latest issue. He picked it up and it fell open easily. His senses found the clues; skin oil permeating the margins, one long curly hair nestled in the center fold, some odd puckering on the slick paper. This was the page that had rendered Blair frozen in contemplation. What the hell? "That Which Survives" declared the article's title in a large font vaguely suggestive of Cyrillic lettering. In slightly smaller print was a subcaption: "Love Among the Ruins." And another, still smaller caption read, "Among the steppes of Russia, the remains of two ancient chiefs hint at a love story as old as the hills in which they were buried." And there was a photograph. Something invisible punched Jim in the gut. The picture was large, allowing substantial detail. A group of people in jeans and windbreakers stood in a circle, gazing down into an excavation littered with shovels and trowels, brushes, notebooks, tape measures and calipers. At the bottom of the pit two skeletons lay curled around each other, the smaller nestled in the spare embrace of the larger. A scattering of beads decorated what had once been their necks and wrists. Pieces of bronze decoration lay where leather belts and tunics and boots had once clothed chests and legs. Burial trove, lavish for what was clearly an ancient nomadic tribe, surrounded the couple; spearheads and drinking cups and other items of daily life made grand by the valuable metal of which they had been fashioned. Without conscious thought Jim's fingers swept lightly over the colored shadows of embracing bones, and stumbled on the puckers in the paper that he'd noticed before. He lifted his fingertips to his nose and inhaled ... Blair. This photograph had paralyzed the young man, captured his gaze and his imagination, and in the end moved him to tears which now gave evidence of the picture's power over his heart. A power that heard the question Jim had never voiced, even in his mind, and now without summons manifested the answer before the Sentinel's eyes. Beneath his fingers the paper seemed to shiver and the photo imprinted on its surface shimmered and took on a bluish tinge. The shadows depicted there rippled and blued too, and shapeshifted. Jim blinked and refocused his eyes, and lost his power to breath. The t-shirted, ball-capped archaeologists were still standing in a ring around the burial pit. But their modern dress and curious air were gone. Now they were clad in goatskins, their hair was long and bound in leather, and their postures reflected deep sorrow. Two men, one tall, one shorter and heavy-set, and a slender woman with wild curls, had left the circle and were kneeling in the pit, arranging with great grief and tenderness and care the funereal clothing and burial gifts that surrounded.... Two men. Two bodies. One was tall and tightly muscled, with short hair, a high brow and cheekbones, and a mouth set in a firm line. He lay curled around a smaller man with tousled hair and a full mouth that seemed touched by bright laughter even in death. The larger man's arms encircled the smaller, and their fingers were entwined. "Jim...." The sleepy, sorrowful whisper crept into his ears and brought him back. The azure tinges in the photograph faded to gray and then slipped back into color, returning the modern images to the picture. "Jim...." Again, that mournful murmur of loss and apology. And a low rumbling cough ... congestion ... bronchitis again? Jim frowned. Blair had only just got over his third bout with it in the year that separated now from then. The magazine was returned to the coffee table, and Jim rose from the couch and walked quietly to the French doors that stood slightly ajar. Ragged breathing disturbed the small space. Hands clenched and released folds of sheet and comforter. The figure curled on the bed, almost lost within the jumble of tangled bedclothes, was in the exact same position as the one in the photograph ... except that he was alone. Jim felt a phantom wind upon his neck. And in his mind a whisper.... What do you fear? The answer was all too clear. And Jim began to breathe again. He knew they weren't safe yet, or fixed. Things would be rough between them, probably for a long time. He'd fuck up again and again, and so would Blair. They'd fight, and hurt each other, maybe even walk away from each other. And the certain insight that seized him at that moment held no absolution for his past and future sins. But it did hold comfort. Destiny, that thief of free will and self-determination that could, and often did, remain unfulfilled, had nothing to do with it. Love had everything to do with it. He and Blair would be together. Again. And again, and again. Jim smiled, and went to bed. ~~~
And some of you
are harmonies to all the notes I play So one more
time we'll dim the lights and ring the curtain up ~ 30 ~ ~ Return to "The Sentinel" Page ~
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