A bone yard can seem like an apocalyptic setting. This one, just outside the enormous theme park held parallel two popular pedestrian roads. The acreage could be seen above composed as a massive Zen garden holding enormous neon signs half covered in false ivy and topiary, a dead dragon exposing its skeleton of wire guts where maché skin had been eaten away by rodents, and a façade of a charred saloon. Indescribable and misunderstood humps of lost-useful things too big to be trapped indoors all nestled on the bleached antiseptic sand. The wabi-sabi of calm and individual. From the ground it looked like a giant’s playpen who had thrown toys around to amuse himself, or perhaps to strategize warfare with use objects. Looked at a third time; a mental map, a large hippocampus’ treasure. However, that may be going a bit too far.
Jenny was a slight young woman intent on beginning over and over, with blunt feet and the posture of a stargazer. Wallace was studied in drawing an analogy between the macrocosmos of nature and the microcosmos of man, without much interest in between. He seemed never to begin nor end conversations, comfortable instead with a continuous inner speak that jumped out now and again. Like miniature articulating dolls they appear from the direction of the ten-foot cyclone barrier. They have used this cut through many times and were not so unimpressed as familiar with the sites.
They walked through the distressed junkyard tossing out famous last lines.
“This is not as dangerous as it looks.”
“Ha, if weren’t safe they wouldn’t let us do it.”
“We’ll be safe under here….”
“This rope will hold.”
Laughing came easily with easy company.
“Oh yea” he said picking up a thread of an earlier conversation,
“I got it; every religious conviction then, by nature, is half speculative.”
When her confirmation was not forthcoming he added, “Qui tacet consentire videtur?”
“Right, grasshopper,” Jenny offered with a quirky smile erupting.
With her forearm she wiped back her long boyish sweaty bangs exposing an impressive birthmark over her center eye. It was a vestige of a former life.
He egged her onto a story he had heard numerous times. Thinking herself as being measured, she straightened her small frame, gaining composer and height as she walked on passing two-story ball and jacks, and a nest of archaeopteryx. Wallace smiled for what was coming and also for the advantage of now having space for his own thoughts. A bit of harmless trickery.
She told what she remembered, though words could not capture the richness and mystery of the tapestries that bore her image.
“We were not treated as well as you would expect. By nature we were holy things. The few of us evoked a since of preciousness to man but we were warriors and had to defend. Our safety vanished when we became known. When you are rare and beautiful you do not need to rely on magic … only malice. Our lives where fierce winds. The hunters were studied in false magic. But, we were not touched by charms or caged by low fences. The men were cloaked in charity, holding nets of magic, uttering profanity under their breath at every defeat. They blamed us for attempting escape. They blamed us when their trickery did not land us and they only became more determined to incarcerate our spirit.”
Her face grew darker in the shadow of a ridiculous massive sea monster.
“When the secret weapon appeared — a glowing white symbolizing the comfort we sought — we eventually fell. We could not sway the Virgin for long. We were not so strong against Her allure. Who of the forest dwellers had the inner power to deny Her? We were caught and bred into delusion and ineptitude. Hailed as profane and spat with irreverence. Her bloodied white gown our embarrassing mantle. Mythosed into plastic pastel colored ponies.”
Letting out a slow breath, Jenny brightened tossing her head back.
“Your turn,” she queued loud enough to jolt him from his obvious private reverie.
“I was once and future primordial spec of which all things came to be and then the end.”
Wallace was whistling the preamble to the Superman Theme as they found the chink in the fence, maneuvered through, and were gone to the other side.
-30-
