The Rock on The Hill

The Rock On the Hill

The sky flared out endlessly overhead in a brilliant angel eye blue and dangled a few puffy white clouds over Guirmean, but he wasn’t much impressed. He was holding down the east side of Ferguson Hill with the prone weight of his body and that was plenty enough for him to be thinking about. He didn’t have the luxury to fuss about the color of the sky. It was always some shade of blue. The folly of ruminating about some water vapor collecting into a Rorschach overhead escaped his sensibilities. Fools and philosophers could spend their minutes, days and years contemplating the meaning of the miniscule but to Guirmean, time meant something different. In fact, he didn’t think much of time either. Except of course, all the time he had. All the time he had, laying on some little patch of moss on Ferguson Hill.
He had traded in all of his moments for minutes.
He swapped them for immortality.
It all started a month ago last night. Guirmean was at The Falcon’s Head, swapping his weeks wages for a couple of jars. Like always, he kept to himself bent up close to the bar, barely moving except to bring glass to lips. He tried to squeeze himself into the shadows and pretend nobody knew him, but it was just that, pretend.
It was the only pub in town, set a little way over the ridge of Teagan’s Bluff, on the road to Shrewsbury. The old cunts that gossiped on Sunday after worshipping the Lord, always made note of the husbands that walked up that hill and when they staggered back down. Those moldy hags made juicy bits of the chaps that didn’t wander out till after sunrise. It was assumed by those moth ridden busy bodies that the hung over husbands, rehearsing their apology as the stumbled home, had dipped their wanker into one of the sorry whores that plied their trade in that den of sin. In reality, they probably had gotten too drunk to unwrinkle their troublemakers and spent the night snoring in a puddle of piss on the floor.
Guirmean ended yesterday’s work by putting down his shovel and walking over to his boss, Chalmers, and making sure he got his money before the bastard slipped out of town. Chalmers and Guirmen had been mates all back in school, but Chalmers’ dad owned most of the town and Guirmean dad owed most of the town. When they both turned eighteen, Guirmean went to work and Chalmers went to university. Four years later, Chalmers came back with manicured fingernails and Guirmean started digging ditches for him. Guirmean felt bugs squirm under his skin every Friday when he had to humble himself to Chalmers just to get what he earned. Chalmers loved it, having grown men kowtow under him, especially his old schoolmates.
He often disappeared on Fridays afternoons just for sport. He loved the added humiliation he piled on everyone as they scurried around town looking for him, just to get their pay. Guirmean had confronted him early.
“Best you settle up wid' me fair for you wander off.” He demanded, smearing dirt across his forehead as he swiped at the sweat.
“You haven’t worked a full week yet.” Chalmers sneered back “I don’t pay on credit.”
“Fuck it Chalmers! Ye sorry fucking waste of space. You know I’m gonna finish the day. I just want to get what is due me before you wander off.”
“Did ye just swear at me?” Chalmers folded his arms across his chest indignantly. Guirmean tried to pull back a moment that was already gone. His tongue had always been quicker than his brain.
“Dat’s it.” Chalmers said, “Burst the road. You’re as good as sacked. I won’t take dat from da likes ay ye.”
“Aww fur fuck’s sakes. I didn’t pure mean it. I forgot myself fur a moment and thought we were back scuffling around at da yard loch when we were lads. Don’t take me job Chalmers. Me old lady will kill me an' I need da job. There ain’t no other jobs around here but working' fur ye.”
“We'll, right, ye should have thought it’ bit 'at fore yer opened your yap in disrespect. We ain’t lads no more an' yer ain’t me mucker, never were.” Chalmers pulled a roll of bills out of his front pocket and peeled off a few. “Here’s whit I owe ye an' a bit more tae send ye on year way.”
Guirmean kept his hands to his side. He knew once he took the money, it was over. He was out another job. He didn’t even want to look at it.
“Go’an on tik it.” Chalmers shouted “Tik it and piss off.”
Guirmean still didn’t reach out. He didn’t even look up. His skin bubbled pink with heat. Choking on a lifetime of rage, his throat swelled shut. He pushed hard against his emotions and stuffed them back into the empty black.
“Jesus Christ, fuck it.” Guirmean grabbed the bills. He tossed his shovel and spit, turned his back to the job he just lost and walked away. “No sense in worryin' abit it no. what’s dain is dain.” his mind rationalized, “fine for ye ta say, but whit am I gonna tell Da?”
There was no answer to that, at least none that Guirmean wanted to hear. He just followed his stumble all the way past the Campbell’s place at the edge of town and up into the hills. He was up was up near the big rock that’s split down the middle. The one they call Inverclyde Hideout. Up there the air is always damp and milky. The fog hovers thick around the top half of the hill. Generations of locals have speculated about the malicious portents and the ghastly lurkings that emanated from their indigenous Olympus of evil. Dark tales of what goes on up there in the fog made great excuses for things nobody wanted to explain and sparked nightmares in sleeping children. Men could move like shadows and shadows melanized into men betwixt the heavy fog.
Guirmean knew all that was a cart load of shite. He knew the demons weren’t on some soggy hillside, they were in his head.
He was out of breath. He flopped down and lay out on his back. The fog was so thick; it almost felt like rain across his face. Droplets collected on his forehead and trickled down whatever side gravity fancied. Guirmean pulled a rumpled pack of Kensitas Clubs from his front pocket and plucked out one of the lesser bent ciggies. He popped the fag between his lips.
“Fuck!” he thought, “I don have a fucking light.”
He plunged both hands into their respective pocket and fumbled for a lighter he knew wasn’t there. It was just another disappointment in a washout day of total failure. All the air emptied out of his lungs with a giant sigh and all his anger left him, leaving his muscles slack against the damp earth. He felt like a turd, abandoned by its maker to petrify on some mossy slope. Wisps of stream rose from his body, dancing in the air like kelp in the undertow. He just wanted to leave, leave this dead end town, leave his shitty job, leave his wasted life and just fucking forget it all. Life wasn’t worth the struggle.
Guirmean despised all the people that believed in the lie that life was a gift. If life was a gift, it was the worst present he ever got. It was worse than getting a pair of socks for Christmas. It was like God, just like Santa, never read his Christmas list and gave him whatever crappy gift was left in the bottom of his bag after handing out all of the cool shit.
“I never asked for this!” Guirmean shouted up to the stars. “I didn’t choose to be born.”
Guirmean chuckled at himself. Nobody chooses this shit. He thought about those Sunday school lessons that said all of us were up there in Heaven clamoring to be born. We were all just begging God to kick us out of Nirvana and spend a couple of years getting shit on by the other ones lucky enough to be born into privilege and oh yea, fight off Satan while we’re mucking about the entire pile of shit.
“What a fucking lark. A pile a shit I ain’t gonna swallow no more. Yaw hear me yaw bastard? I ain’t buying your shit no more.” German’s voice detonated into the night, “I don’t want what you’re selling. I just want some peace. I want to just lie here and watch time go by, nobody to bother me and nothing to do. I just want the whole world to let me be.”
He went rigid. Every muscle in his body flexed in acrimony then softened as his consciousness blurred under the strain. The world went swirled into a brilliant gray.
Guirmean was startled by the sound of footsteps coming up the hill. He tried to rise but gravity kept him pinned to the earth. He craned his neck, peering down the hill into the fog, but couldn’t see who was approaching. The stranger’s footsteps echoed louder as the got closer. Still, Guirmean could see nothing.
Suddenly, a shadow materialized out of the mist.
It was a man. A giant of a man, his outline stretched across the mist like a house. He was bigger than any man Guirmean had ever seen before. The atmosphere stagnated and putrefied. There was no noise as the shadow floated up to him in a velvety skate. For a second, Guirmean felt panic, then unclipped into calm. Time slowed to a crawl.
The shadow exploded into to a brilliant glare. Guirmean tried to shield his eyes with his left hand.
“Guirmean, I have heard your questions of doubt.” The specter pulsated as it spoke. “I can affirm your beliefs.”
“Piss off!” Guirmean extended his arm and gave the apparition the finger.
The spectacle fluttered rapidly. “I am the Eidelon of Numen. I have come to assuage your fears.”
Guirmen sat up. “Look you sparkling twat of whatever, unless you got £100,000 and a life supply of whiskey, you better just piss the fuck off. I don’t want your bullshit. I just want to be left alone. I just want to sit here forever. I never want to have to lift a finger again. I just want some bloody fucking peace. I want you and the whole fucking world to leave me alone and just let me sit here.”
There was no response. The sparkle just faded into a dot, then disappeared. Guirmean smiled. He was filled with a calm peace. He tried to roll over and go to sleep but couldn’t. He seemed stuck. He tried again but couldn’t move. Exhausted, he gave up and drifted off to sleep.
He woke in the morning with a cool mist splashing on his face. He knew that a good soaking rain was soon to come and that he better get home before it hit. He tried to stand but couldn’t. In fact, he couldn’t move at all, not even a wiggle. There was nothing he could do. He pushed and pushed against the constraint, but to no avail. Frustrated, he screamed for help but no sound came out. He screamed again. Again, there was nothing but silence.
Two weeks went by and still Guirmean found himself stuck in the ground. He had stopped screaming. Sooner or later, he figured somebody would come up here and find him. One day some people did wander up there. Two people, a young couple, went up Ferguson Hill to be alone and have a picnic above the mist.
The walked up and spread out a blanket right next to Guirmean. He tried to scream and get there attention but was frozen. The young lovers frolicked about for a while in the fog then collapsed with silly giggles on the blanket next Guirmean.
“Can’t you see me?” he tried to scream, “I’ right here.”
They heard nothing or ignored him. Without any shame the made love. At one point, the girl was even bent over Guirmean. They were oblivious to his plight. He was just part of the landscape, inanimate and disregarded. When the two were done, they packed up and went on their way. The never gave Guirmean any mind.
After they were gone, Guirmean realized his fate. He screamed that this isn’t what he meant, but nobody heard his pleas.
Everyone left him alone.

Unnoticed

I waded through my teenage years, struggling in the muck between being cool and being a loser. I was lost in the gooey middle of life known as mediocrity. Nobody picked me first when we divided up into teams and nobody picked on me when we commingled in the hallways between classes. I was nothing more than an also ran in every sport I played and valedictorian was just another word I couldn’t spell unless I looked it up. Most of my teachers needed to use their seating charts if they wanted to call me by name. Even the herd of kids that had walked past my face countless times over the last four years knew me only as “Oh yeah, that guy.”
I was unnoticed.
I was a ghost, an apparition.
I was an unheard whisper.
I was an unperceived particle of dust floating around in a world that kept expanding exponentially out away from me. Everything got bigger and bigger and life kept moving faster and faster. Nothing about life made any sense. Nothing I thought or did seemed to matter at all. Nobody even knew I was alive. Nobody knew who I was. I didn’t even know who I was.
I was lost in my own skin.
And I hated it.
I wanted to be noticed. I wanted to be heard. I wanted to be somebody and I wanted to do something that would make the entire world stand up and take notice. I wanted to scream out loud across the whole planet and make everyone listen.
But I didn’t know what to say.
I didn’t have any great words or giant ideas. There was nothing behind the bravado I wanted to display. I was pretty much the tiny speck of unimportant that life had labeled me.
So there I was, at a crossroad between accepting my fate or trying to be something that I could never become. I could slide into the meaningless role assigned to me or spend my life struggling to show the world how great I really was.
I refused to choose.
I said “Fuck it!” and took the easy way out.
I got all sorts of high and forgot all about it.
Shit was a lot better for a while.
Life wasn’t this giant puzzle I needed to solve anymore. It became a series of moments that only mattered for as long as they were there. I still was unnoticed but suddenly I noticed everything. The small corners of everything around me were lit up. I dove into the tiny parts of life I never knew were there and swam wide eyed into the vastness all around me.
I experienced all the clichés.
I heard the silence, smelt the colors and tasted the music. The sensation was boundless and even though I was still small I felt like I was part of something beyond immense. Sounds silly, but it is true.
It was all that and more.
But I was dancing with a duplicitous partner.
Soon the shiny parts dimmed and all the reality that I had been avoiding caught up with me and hammered me with a vengeance.
Being wasted wasn’t a diversion anymore it was my new reality. All those fun nights didn’t end with me passing out softly in my bed or on a friends couch. I found myself, more and more, trying to stay awake in some holding tank surrounded by all the other riff raff rounded up by the police that night.
I started doing things I never thought I would. Things I thought I couldn’t do. Not me. I wasn’t like that. Was I?
But I was.
That was me cooking up the shitty coke we got from the projects so we could smoke “the good stuff”.
That was me snorting smack and justifying it by saying “At least I wasn’t shooting it.”
That was me pawning some crappy camera I stole from my uncle to buy drugs.
That was me pinned under my jeep after I flipped it into a swamp.
That was me sitting in a New Haven jail for six months.
It was all me.
I remember the day I got out like it was yesterday. When I got arrested it was summer and I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. My buddy Chase was there when I walked out the front doors. Cool as he always was, he had a flannel shirt with him and he tossed it to me.
He drove me back to Cheshire but I had nowhere to go. He turned around and brought me back to the city. We smoked a bowl on the way. I hadn’t been high in such a long time. It felt good, but it wasn’t the same.
There weren’t any hidden corners for me to see anymore. Shit was just there and it all looked the same. I was in an easy fog and I let my head rest against the passenger door window. I watched the scenery blur past me as we sped down the Merritt Parkway. Chase didn’t say anything. He always was the best at just being there when you needed him and not fucking everything up with words.
He let me out somewhere that doesn’t matter.
“Are you sure?” he asked me, knowing I wasn’t going to answer. I just closed the door and watched him drive off.
So there I was, at the crossroad between accepting my fate of being who I had become or trying to be something that I knew I could be.
It was an easy choice.
I felt the chill air sting my bare legs and pulled the flannel shirt tighter around me.
I knew a guy that lived close by. Maybe I could crash at his place for a bit until I put my life back on track?
I was still unnoticed by the world around me.
At least now I was starting to see the real me.

The Boots

My dad brought home some work boots for me one night. He was pretty proud of them, I could tell by how anxious he was to show them to me. He was so anxious he forgot that he worked the third shift and had gotten home at 4 am. I always slept alert and felt his presence intrude my unconsciousness and sit on my bed. I snapped up into a sitting position, not knowing if I was going to get beat or hugged. I stabbed the folded knuckles of my index fingers into the corners of my eyes to brush away some crusted sleep and crumpled up my forehead, hoping to get a better view.

Dad was creepy.

Not all the time, but sometimes, especially when he woke me up in the middle of the night and tried to talk to me. He talked at me with words I didn't understand but looked at me like he wanted me to respond. Sometimes he got real mad when I didn't know what to say. I always froze in fear and lack of understanding, sort of how I imagine the Native Americans acted when they sat down to talk to the first Europeans that crashed their party. I wish I could go back as the grown up me and have those conversations, because I think my dad just wanted somebody to talk to.

He was all happy and his blurry silhouette wrapped around a gaping smile and wild eyes that were too white to be drunk. He dangled something over my eyebrows with his right hand. They were work boots. I guessed he had got them really cheap off of some truck that came by the shop he worked at. I tried to get a handle on the situation, but got fixated on all the saliva glistening on his lips as he told me he didn’t get them from some Mafia truck or a truck driven by a group of Holy Roller grandmothers trying to raise money for their Monkey Farm. At least that’s what I think he told me. I sighed out a thank you, then unbent myself into horizontal and pretended to fall asleep. I felt his weight leave the bed and waited until he was done stumbling around and had collapsed on his own bed, before I let my guard down. Even then, I didn’t relax much until I heard his rumbling snore. That’s when I knew it was safe and I let the darkness tuck me in.

When I got up in the morning there was a pair of black work boots laughing at me from the end of my bed. Not really laughing, just sort of curling up a double stitched plastic polygrip sole around a fake steel toe.

“Come on Fonzie, everyone is wearing black.” The boots said to me in some weird Italian accent. “Put us on and feel the power of Black Plastic.”

I warbled like a frightened Yeti about to crap its fur, and kicked the ebony abominations to the floor. The plastic thud of the boots died quickly, but my warble hit my dads face and he snorted into semi-consciousness.

“Lunch money is on my dresser.” He mumbled. I looked at him and noticed that all the glistening spit from last night had crusted up and caked his lips with white. “Don’t touch anything else.”

I shook my brother awake. He pushed himself up and out from under the covers. He had no idea what was going on, nor would I ever want him to. He just put his feet on the floor and started telling me about the crazy dream he had. I widened my eyes, hoping the glare would flag him down. It did and he gasped, trying to suck back in the words that had already escaped. He knew not to wake the sleeping monster. We went through our entire morning regimen in silent tiptoe. We barely turned the water up past a trickle to brush our teeth and wash our faces. Experience made sure we quietly wiggled our dresser drawers over the spots we knew would squeak. I snapped on a long sleeve plaid shirt and pulled a pair of brown corduroys that had worn flat on both knees, up to my hips. I tucked everything in and slowly, quite deliberately, snaked my belt through every loop. There was nothing left to do but put on some shoes.

I looked over at my sneakers. I had tamed them the first day I got them. I scraped them across the kickball field and had scuffed all the newness out of them. I wasn’t intimidated by their shiny white leather or unfrayed laces. I dragged my foot sideways across every third sidewalk crack I came across on the way into school, made sure I rubbed some playground dirt into them at every recess and even had six of my friends plaster them with the biggest lugies they could hawk up. My Dad was pretty pissed when he saw his six dollar investment into me all ragged and lugie coated next to the front door when he came home from work that night. He fumed and ranted that weekend about how he was never going to buy me anything ever again. I remember how my childhood naiveté thought he never bought me anything anyway.

“I didn’t ask for your stupid sneakers,” I hissed in genuine hatred, “I wanted work boots.”

Of course I wanted work boots. All the kids my age were wearing work boots at the time. I failed to spit out with the rest of my venom, that all the other kids were wearing yellow Timberlines.

I guess I struck a chord somewhere in the man born with a heart three sizes too small. Two weeks later, when the machine shop he worked at, doled out his due, he cut his bar tab a couple of beers short and tried to make his son happy. He went out to Marshalls, and got his eldest kid some work boots. He hadn’t just stumbled across them one night like I thought he did. He had actually made a genuine stab at being a dad.

He tried, but those boots were just going to make my life worse.

The boots knew it too, I could hear them laughing as I slipped my heel down into the hard black plastic. I pulled the laces tight up through all the eyelets and tied them in a knot. I started to walk across to the bedroom door.

Suddenly, The Monster woke. He twisted his feet to the floor and scratched at his bald spot as he sat up. His bulging eyes, cracked red with bloodshot, were too dry too blink out last night’s sleep. He just stood up full prone naked and barked “What the Hell time is it?” He reached back and picked at his ass, “What the Hell are you kids doing?”

“We’re just getting ready for school.” I said.

“Well, don’t make so much fucking noise.” He did a straight leg zombie walk into the bathroom and slammed the door. I heard the seat go down and figured he would be in there for a while.

I pulled four quarters off the dresser, along with two blue tickets that resembled something the Jaycees give you for a dollar in a turkey raffle. The silver was our lunch money. The blue ticket meant we didn’t have to pay the whole buck fifty everyone else did. I looked back at my brother who was standing next to the bathroom door.

“Let’s go.” I yelled with a whisper.

“I can’t,” he said “I haven’t brushed my teeth.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I gotta brush them.”

“Fine, you can wait for him to come out. I’ll be down stairs.”

I closed the bedroom door behind me and made my way downstairs. I made sure to go through the living room and avoid my grandparents in the kitchen. They were just waiting to trap me into a sit down breakfast of cracked wheat cereal and baby talk. Heck, they are still trying to do that to the adult me.

I was out in the driveway, waiting for my brother, nonchalantly slamming my toes into the asphalt. Those damn black boots were impervious. After a bit, I realized that my brother hadn’t come down. I got worried and sped back upstairs, racing through the kitchen past grandparents that mumbled some indignant protests of whatever grandparents protest about. I steamed down the hall, but ever so gently pushed open the bedroom door.

I saw my brother doing The Pee Pee Dance and pointing and the bathroom. I walked up and looked in. There was my father sitting on the toilet, face resting on his knees and snoring away. I told my brother to go down the hall to the guest bathroom. I took one step in, thinking I should wake him up and put him to bed, like so many times before.

I paused for a second and the moment was etched indelibly into my memory. He actually looked sort of comfortable folded up and snoring on his porcelain bed. I glanced down at my feet and decided to let him stay there.

It was the least I could do to let him sleep. After all, he did bring me home a fine pair of work boots.