The boy opened his eyes to the bright streaky sun and closed them quick again. Birds were singing in the treetops and bugs were buzzing his face. In these woods near a mostly dry creek, a crow guard sat watching the boy from its perch above everything in a dead oak. The child was an unknown, his face not registering in the long line of memory the bird possessed. The crow guard focused its blank gaze into the boy’s eyes, attempting to draw forward any sign of who he was or where he’d come from, but it was no use. There was no recollection at all. No face matches to a distant cousin. No recognition of some long past smile. The bird watched as the boy sighed and laid flat down there in a slash of green. His eyes remained closed. His chest rose and settled in slight display, each of his breaths a solid witness confirming his life.
His body, to the crow in the tree, appeared reasonably stout. He was thickish and not pale. He didn’t appear wounded or sick. The bird tilted its head slightly to the left, towards the setting sun hill. In its black reflective eyes there was a master’s painting of a child sprawled out like this one was, a Renaissance rendering of a contented lad and the summer unfolding. Timelessness abounds with the forest unstirred by breeze. Soon, another crow appeared upon the branch beside the watcher. It too cocked its head toward the west, a kind of homage to the mystery before them both. The sun, of course, was revered, and because of that, as well as because of many other interesting things, the sinking sun’s path was always, in the mind’s of crows, to be noted.
Both birds were perfectly balanced. Peering at this creature down in the wildflowers near a tangle of vine, it was after some time that the boy opened his eyes again, squinting tightly, so that he might keep the hard light at bay.
Without any sign or warning, the boy came to life.
“Splahhhhh!” he hollered, his lips spitting into the sky as he wiped his mouth with the side of his hand. He was sat up now, leaning back on his other arm.
“Dreadful bad! Oh awful dreadful bastards!” he cried. “Rotten piss bugs!”
The crows perked up, grew even more curious.
“Pthhhhck!” The boy hummed his lips to rid them of the insect that had been trying to get in his mouth. “Be damned! Burn in hell you infested demons!”
All singing birds fell silent now. The whole world seemed suddenly interested in what was unfolding here in this little woods off the corner of a farmer’s field. Here in the country, the presence of this stranger child was being noted. As such, word spread as word does and before long shy rabbits carried the message to nosy squirrels. There’s a boy child in the way of the gulch.
Groggy deer bedded in thickets were stirred up by the wave of gossip. Excitement rolled with the pace of fire and before long, every groundhog and raccoon within a mile in any direction was being told about the boy over in the gulch farm woods. An old woman put a hot pie on her windowsill just as a red fox tore through her barn, demanding to the chickens that they pay attention to this news at hand. Dogs were howling and baying and weeping to be set free upon the land. They stretched their ropes if they were in them. If they were loose, they set out for the place they’d been told of.
Long down the ridge, along the road, the dust of the billionth summer day in the history of the world was being kicked up into the sky by something massive and moving. A murky cloud rose like smoke from fire. Below it on the ground, an army was coming. The boy was expecting them but the rest were not. The crows moved their eyes from the boy on the ground to the distant dust cloud and then back to the child again.
The boy was wiping his face now with an open palm. He licked at his lips, purposefully, as if he was cleaning them some more, and then, in one thrusting action, he rose to his feet and began to stretch out his arms by reaching them skyward.
In the distance, the faintest sounds were becoming true. A far off singing, a barely perceptible river’s roar, slight alarm lit the boy’s eyes when he noticed it. He scratched the back of his neck which was red with sun and welted by mosquito bites. Another sigh and he spoke one last time to the forest, to the the woods, to these couple of birds, some might say. Or maybe it was to the distant murmur of his own unknown legend: bustling in the ditches by the lanes: earthy channels where the unseemliest muskrats moved freely, untested, unseen, at once, towards the yawps of the crows and all that they meant.
“I’m moving on!,” the boy yelled.
“You seen me, yes, but now you’ll see me no more, you mad old backwood fools!”
At that moment, a turkey stepped up out of the creek bed as if summoned by the longing of the child’s speak.
“I see you old turkey!,” the boy exclaimed, laughter spreading through his face. “I see you trying to come away with me, but it’s no use.” He giggled. “You tough old hen.”
He slapped his side then as the sun piped down into the woods/ falling cosmically through slats in the treetops/ the whispering light/ this barely conscious sense of earth whipping around the sun.
“Dumb old turkey bird,” the boy spoke to no one. “I won’t take no turkey friend along with me where I’m headed.”
The tree crows’ eyes were so dark then, so very fixed upon the boy.
The boy took half an apple out of his pants pocket, licked it slowly with his tongue, and carefully rolled it towards the turkey in the place she stood a few yards away. The child was beaming, two deep dimples showing. His hair was mousy string and he flung it’s length out of his eyes so that he could gauge the scene a bit better.
“I’m going to fight in the war,” the boy boasted, not shyly.
“No you’re not,” the turkey replied to him, flatly, with a matronly tone.
The boy stood grinning at the bird’s sleek bronze figure a moment, his face flush with genuine wonder. He shook his head in mock disbelief. He put his hands on his hips and he tipped his head to the west side of the land. It appeared for an instant or two, that this boy was actually quite old, but then time passed and he was a boy once more.
“Oh yes I am. I am indeed, Old Turk,” the boy smiled.
The turkey scratched the leaves in front of her with her foot, looked away.
“Off to fight in the big bad battles,” he said.
His eyes gravitated towards the sunny treetops.
“And you’ll be talking about me forever.”
The turkey ignored the boy.
_____
In the time between when the boy woke up in the woods and the army came, a few things were unfolding that ought to be mentioned. Back in the house where the boy had lived until two days prior, a young woman was staring out of a kitchen window at a man kicking a goat in the groin.
“Pay me my money back!,” the man was demanding of the goat. “Pay me for the fruit!” (he kicked). “And pay me for the eggs!" (he kicked). “And pay me for all that syrup, you blasted scoundrel!” (he kicked and missed and landed, with a cry, on his back in the barnyard dust.)
The woman showed some concern. Alone in the hidden shade of the house, she twisted a rag hard in her fists and tucked her bottom lip under her front teeth. Yet she remained motionless and said not a word as she observed the man, who was her husband, mumbling to himself from his spot in the dust cloud all around him as he lay on the ground.
It had been a hard few months at the tail end of a hard few years. No one had showed up to save the family from the never-ending pummeling of being alive. Two children were buried in the field beyond the big barn. One, a daughter, had died last autumn, in her 4th year, from fever. The other, a son, had died this past spring, from a horse kick to the head at the break of dawn. He was just two weeks shy of his 12th birthday. Both losses had, quite understandably, unleashed the deepest sense of unmooring within the woman. And in her last remaining child as well. The living boy, who been sat or stood beside each of his siblings when they died, had slipped away himself, from a kind and caring middle child to someone “bound by a tether to the devil himself,” as his father had come to say.
The woman settled the rag gently on the counter in front of her. She had been wiping a small spill of milk she’d been pouring for the kittens when she’d heard the ruckus out in the back. Helmer, the man she’d been married to for 13 years now, had sworn vengeance on the billy goat they called, Hercules. Over time, the goat had disposed of so many valuable things: small tools, cooling cakes, playing cards, and a hand-carved pine owl that Helmer’s father had presented to him upon the birth of their first born. Each transgression had been received slightly worse than the previous by her husband and so by the time this morning happened, and the farmer had discovered that Hercules had eaten a basket of strawberries and a basket of eggs that were bound for the market in town, the long unfolding had come to pass. The goat had belittled the man one too many times. And the man had had enough.
She heard him rambling as she tried to go about her chores, but she felt discontentment rising within. Something more would happen, she told herself. His raucous ways were one thing, but these wild tones this morning felt something more than that. A few minutes went by. When she next glanced into the yard from the window in the kitchen, there was her husband, the man she’d once held in her arms under the sprawl of a midnight willow tree, sensing the magic of the stars in his kiss, the keys to all locked doors in his calming steady breath, setting fire to the rogue goat. Or trying to, as these things go.
_____
_____
When the army approaches, a stillness rises. Absorbing, at once, both land and sky, the sense is of a room, as a thunderstorm rolls in, the master bedroom door slamming shut from the panic of the ghosts that inhabit the place; those types rarely give themselves away. The surrender of air/ its forced retreat from around us/ the quiet suction of common atmosphere as it is replaced by something heavier, something stiller and darker altogether/ the spinning plates of gravity rising up from the floorboards/ alone yet aware of the presence of others/ the grazing of our skin/ gossamer threads/ mystical web strings/ the slenderish fingers of death caressing us/ conjuring us/ teasing us with the very thrill of her touch/ the rising beats of our hearts/ the unsaid becomes known as the black fury moves across the yard/ swallows the outbuildings/ the approaching mass paints over the places we have stood in the sunshine with all the darkest tones of never again/ it lets loose upon the land a seismic slap of lightning that kills birds out of the sky and fish mid leap/ it electrocutes worms in the dirt and raises the dead from their graves/ two pale children beyond the barn/ standing in the first bitter cold plops of a rain/ each child clinging to the flapping filthy roots of this upside down sea/ a hammering of violent witches against all sides of the house/ the choice is the storm’s/ to grow our corn/ or wash us away/ we hold our breath/ such gripping horror from every direction.
_____
The boy stood at the edge of the road on this pleasant afternoon, the turkey by his side. Not far off now, the army was coming/ their advance was unmistakable. It, the army, pushed a tainted scent ahead of it, like the mud of a slow river war-painted tear down the cheek of your face. He could detect so many parts to the smell: the low base flavors of root vegetables, of burped-up country soup, it was all pushed aside almost at once by wave upon wave of tobacco smoke and horse shit and the tang of damp human feet being scraped upon stony roads. What rolled up over the short ridge was a barely rolling miasma that wrapped itself around the boy, and his stubborn turkey, with all of the frightening grace that any sprawled miles-long coming snake of an army has to offer.
Hearing the clamor, the audible mash of voices and boots and horse steps, it became intoxicating for the boy in those moments before the first flags crested. They would see him then/ this he knew. But that moment was still in the future, lingering above him, watching and waiting, if just for now.
Before, when the odd horseman had given away his approach and come galloping ahead of the beast, eyes peering forward and sidewards to spot any sign of the enemy or danger, the boy supposed, he had held the bird tight to his chest and wrestled it down into the leaves with him. Neither had been spotted as a result and so rather than being dragged back into the army the army was moving naturally, up to them, like he’d dreamed it would.
“You ready, Old Turk?” the boy murmured. “I can’t be held back by some kind of scaredy cat now, okay?”
The turkey remained silent, pecked the ground/ for a fly or an ant. The sweat on the boys back was soaking into his shirt and he could feel that his skin was goosebumping back there the same as his arms. It remained like this for some time too, for one thing about this marching army that no one can ever argue is the fact that it sure took it’s sweet old time doing its thing. Eternities went by as the boy touched the turkey’s scaly head. He scratched the spot where the skin sunk below the surface of all those feathers and the bird coo’d like a pigeon in a box. An aroma of fire came forth, smoke and ash mixed with apple pie, the boy swore, like a good picnic at some church. After that, he smelled the sour pits of the men who owned them and with that scent came yet another and another and another and another: one bleeding into the next so that they combined still to add to the chain of flags being tied together: a blast of hot onion: thick sweet gun oil: kicked up dirt and whiskey and urine: the insides of a chicken being worn like a necklace on this hot summer day in this harsh summer sun.
A mosquito bit the top of the boy’s left ear and he hooted at it as he swatted long after the fact.
“Oh no you don’t,” he cried. “Take a dive in the well, bloodsucker fool!”
He was slapping at his sunburnt neck, feeling around for the guilty bug to kill it when they came over the rise. It wasn’t there a second ago, but there it was when he looked back. Overpowered by the sight of the first flag hanging flapless off a long still pole, the boy lowered his body to the side and scooped up the turkey into his arms. Then he stood once again as a man on a horse a thousand feet tall looked down at him without pausing.
Soldiers were marching by them now, more than he had even imagined. They started and they did not stop. The boy was quivering as the river flowed by. The horseman looked dirty, tired. Their eyes met as the stench of spoiled cabbage and coffee grinds floated out into the boy’s face from the cloud of dust . The soldier held the gaze even as he moved past the child. Before he looked ahead again, his eyes went to the turkey in the boy’s arms. The boy frowned.
The horseman moved on, went up the road a bit. The boy watched him, the army roaring by, knowing he’d soon disappear.
But right before he rounded a bend, that soldier turned his horse around.
Thanks for reading and supporting Thunder Pie, my writing dreamscape.
I’m very grateful to each and every one of you.
Serge
Thunder Pie is edited every single week by Arle Bielanko.
Photos/ Art: SergeB./ AI/ old CivilWar photos
Email: sergebielanko@gmail.com.
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Things I Liked This Week.
School is over for the kids for the summer. That means a bit of a break from driving kids to school every morning for me. Plus a messier house every day. It all comes out in the wash, I guess. I hope their summer is awesome. Hope your kids’ summer is, too.
Have you read the Rolling Stone magazine article about Kid Rock that came out a few weeks ago? It’s called, ““How Kid Rock Went From America’s Favorite Hard-Partying Rock Star to a MAGA Mouthpiece.” Dumb title. But damn, what a story. I still don’t know what the hell is happening there. I’m still trying to figure it all out. Which might even be by design.
I took Henry fishing last Sunday, just me and him this time. We saw a bald eagle dive into the lake and catch a fish. And we caught a lot of bluegills ourselves, had a lot of laughs. It was magic. For me, anyways.
Arle and I have been watching Bodkin on Netflix. It’s definitely influenced by another show we both love, Only Murders in the Building, but it stands on its own. Funny Irish podcast murder show. Yes, please. I’m digging it.
Last week, I got asked to be a guest on my friend, Bob Zimmerman’s esteemed podcast, 2500 DelMonte Street: The Oral History of Tower Records. We talked about a lot of music topics (not just Tower) and had a really engaging conversation, I think. If you dig podcasts: please give it a listen.
Looking forward to part deux
Good work! ✊🏻
More, please! Those of us who have been following the evolution of your writing knew there was a big story in you. Looking forward to seeing where it goes. And Bodkin…the best!