Silverhorn: A Modern Epic in Eleven Tablets
By Gil Gamaches
Part III, Tablets 5–8
5.
Dirk attacks an impressive mint chocolate chip cairn. Sea green, like a Vespa Conn owned once, and freckled. Pimply Hercules behind the counter must be scooping this place outta business.
“Ever dream, kid?”
Dirk’s eyes drift from cone to Conn. “Sure. Don’t you?”
“Last night was a two-for-one. I dreamt I was watching the neighborhood dogs chase cars up the street. One at a time, like a contest. There were a bunch of us, neighbors, it was like a block party or something. And these cars, I mean big cars, like they used to make — tanks, really — turn the corner and drive past us, up the street until outta sight. One at a time, the dogs chase after.”
“Weird.”
“The moon had spread over everything like a thin layer of silver.” Conn closes his eyes. The fluorescent light seems to pulsate in time with the tinny top 40 on the ice cream shop’s radio. “The nex’ thing I know I’m sitting on stairs watching a stream of silver water flow under a house.” He opens his eyes and looks at Dirk, “Fallingwater? No? Never mind.” He shuts his eyes again. “I’m living in this beautiful artwork of a house. No one else but me. It’s all mine but it ain’t. The owner doesn’t know. And someday the owner’s gonna come home. But I don’t know when.”
“Yeah, so?”
Conn exhales and meditates on the practice of patience.
They sit in sunshine on an open expanse of grass in the park.
Dirk asks, “Why do you play?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Why?”
“I mean, I started playing — probably at your age — and it was not something I could ever walk away from. I don’t know how to explain, I guess.”
Dirk looks toward the dirty goose pond in the middle of the park. They watch nannies push strollers along the walkways which frame the grass. Sunbeams dart through the gaps between the buildings, dark mountains looming high above the park. Dirk raises a hand to fend off the glare.
“I read somewhere that what comes from playing music — like thought, memory, emotion — reflect the form of the artist’s soul.”
Dirk grimaces. “What, like playdough?”
“No.” He smiles. “Like the essence of someone. Not the idea of soul, or the ideal soul, but the substance of a particular soul.”
Conn looks again at the dirt under Dirk’s nails, conscious of the stale smell of the kid’s clothes, the greasy blonde hair, the faint but sharp smell of sweat, and something else, something familiar but unnamed. Conn reflexively recalls the smells of his own youth. The Depression. Hours of stickball with the hungry kids who barely spoke English.
Dirk reclines, feels every grass blade through the cotton — twigs and pebbles, too — and places palms behind the head like a pillow. “Tell me another dream.”
Conn rubs the lenses of his aviator sunglasses with the loud, rayon fabric of his Lilly Daché shirt. He makes the conscious choice, again, not to share his recurring nightmare featuring Krupp 88s. “My mother was from Ireland. A thousand years ago, she’d say, it was woodland. Can you imagine? Sometimes I’m in those pristine woods. I’ve got an ax. I start swingin’ that ax just like the Babe. Homerun. Homerun. Right through oak, myrtle, box, yew, plane, even cedar. Ever seen a cedar, kid? When they get real old they stop growing taller. No, really, it’s true. They split like a Y — like a slingshot — and grow fatter . . .”
“Then what?”
“Right. Then I can’t do it anymore. My arms are like salmon, weak, slippery; too tired to swing the ax. My hands are blistered. Bloody. Even when I connect, the ax won’t bite. Something’s off with the blade. It’s lead; soft, smushed, dim. I take it to the smith. He says, I can sharpen this, brother, but you’ll be back for another edge before you get anything done. What do you recommend? He says, lemme do what I do. He works the bellows, a flame builds, he melts the ax in a red-hot cauldron, mixes something, pours the glowing liquid into a mold, then starts working the prongs and hammer. He beats all hell out of that glowing metal. Pours water on it. Steam goes everywhere. He hands the re-forged ax to me and it burns my hands.”
“Then what?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s your dream?”
“It’s not my dream like Martin Luther King had a dream, okay? It’s a dream I have sometimes. You asked.”
“Tell me another one.”
Conn sighs.
“Okay, kid, so there’s this eye and it just floats. Picture it in outer space. An eyeball out of the socket. Imagine a baseball with little tiny blood vessels instead of seams.”
“Done.”
“When it sees something, it glows. When it don’t, it don’t.”
“Um, what does that mean?”
“You wave your hand in front of it, it sees the hand, it glows. 1-2-3. Boom. When there’s nothing in front of it, it just sits there.”
“But don’t yer eyes see all the time, even when they’re not looking at anything?”
“You gonna be a pain in my ass?”
“No.”
“Great.” Conn throws a pine cone. It describes an arc in the blue sky and splashes uninspiringly in the pond’s green substance. A few ducks quack and disperse; some pump wings and lift off but others glide on the slowly spreading ripples.
6.
They carry gig bags as they walk down the misshapen concrete steps. The yawning chasm before them exhales dark and hot. Smells like urine. Bodies crush each other in the stairwell. Some can’t wait to resurface, others grudgingly descend. The sound and vibrations of trains steadily increase in magnitude until they overwhelm the curses, shouts, and pleas.
Without taking his eyes from the current of people flowing past them, Conn shouts, “What do you think?!”
“Of what?!”
“My dreams!”
They’re underground now, dodging panhandlers and helping each other hop over metal turnstiles. Milk-white fluorescent lights vibrate and flicker in the galleries. Flashes of concrete, old yellow safety paint and white tiles. They stop at a junction where the concourse forms an L with a platform. Some stand, sit, lean or shimmy while still other diverse souls bounce and bump like electrons. Conn stakes his claim and puts a twill cap upside down for coins.
Dirk holds the cornet and gives a sage look to Conn. “Your dreams are favorable and precious! Omens even!”
We speak in half truths.
“Remember, kid, conviction. Don’t be afraid. You’re new to this. And you can’t be any worse than new. Play the whole notes we talked about. C. Down to B-flat. Down to G, then up to B-flat again. Repeat. Do that for a bit, got it?”
Dirk nods, lips the mouthpiece, fingers the valves, releases the spit valve and blows. Conn notices the hands shake a bit. He smiles. “Like we practiced. I’ll start. When my foot taps eight times give me C.”
Conn’s first note rings brilliant and true like a bell. The rich, pure sound echoes between tiled walls and fills the subterranean circus, drowning out all other noise like change ringing. A passerby shudders, glares at Conn, and gives him the finger. Others spit and curse at them. Somewhere behind the row of squared, tiled columns, a woman screams. It’s alright kid. Follow me.
“Should be a scotch and soda. Or beer. But you gotta few years. I know you’re thinking I’ve tried it before, why is this old fart being such a sunuvabich but I’m not getting you liquored up because you pop — simply because you did good today. Eat your ice cream and don’t look so mighty pleased with yourself.”
Dirk smiles.
“You feel good?”
Dirk looks down at the cone, at the hands holding the cone. The fingers that manipulated the valves.
“Like the eyeball when it glows.”
Conn’s deep brown eyes shine. They watch the changing expressions on Dirk’s face. Joy. Wonder. Concentration. Relief. Shadows of clouds racing across the surface of the sea.
“I know what you mean. Like you’re finally doing something with purpose.”
Now the clouds gather.
“Maybe that came out wrong. You know what I mean.”
Dark and stormy.
“Which is this. Listen, please. Serious. Not purpose like, I don’t know, why make the bed, for instance. I mean ‘purpose’ like there’s something more to This than laughing . . . than marking time.” Conn points a stubby finger at Dirk’s chest. A stubby finger with black hair like spider legs on the knuckles. Dirk squirms. “Capital P. Purpose.” He adds, “There’s a soul in there and you’re actualizing it. The soul’s Purpose. See? Here you are: in the process of realization and actualization. Becoming a man.”
“I’m not a man.”
Conn withdraws as if bitten. “No . . . Not yet. That doesn’t matter. Look . . . you possess the potential to be anything you want. Everything around you, inside you, and yet to come is potential. You are that eyeball. Waiting to actualize by seeing something. You see, by playing, don’t you see? In that way, the horn in your hand, is moving the needle from potentiality to actualization. Don’t you see? Down in that hellhole you became fully alive. Maybe for the first time. I don’t know, kid, you tell me.”
“But what if I’m like the ax? The wrong kind of metal?”
“Not gonna happen. You are not the wrong kind of metal.” Conn sees the doubt eating Dirk. “Besides, it’s my dream, it’s not about you. I had it long before you.”
Conn sits in the evening dark, staring into the velvet black outside his living room window. He holds the corded handset to his ear. “Well, thank you, I’m glad you called too. Dirk’s a special kid . . . I gathered . . . not much . . . happy to do it . . . That’s really not necessary . . . No, never been there, you? What’re they like? . . . Really? . . . No, I didn’t know that . . . That’s right, way back in the dinosaur times . . . Of course not . . . Okay, you too, uh-huh, bye.”
7.
“I’m telling you, kid, don’t get a bowl. Always get a cone. First, you get more sugar. (Don’t start yapping about waffle cones, they’re too much; the sugar cone is the golden mean.) Secondly, there is no shape apart from the triangle and what is a cone but a triangle spun around thus-wise on a vertex?”
“Cones are messy though.”
“Okay, okay.” Conn rubs his temples with fingertips snubby like little noses. Now he looks up, dead pan. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, your honor, may it please the court. Consider the purpose and nature of both the paper bowl and the sugar cone. On the one hand, the bowl’s purpose is to hold something; here, coffee flavored ice cream. We may disagree with learned counsel, and yet we can all praise the defendant’s flavor selection. But look here, the bowl’s purpose may be to protect fingers, hands and clothes from getting sticky. But then again, my friends, that’s what napkins are for. On the other hand, a cone’s purpose is not only to hold the ice cream as the humble bowl does but also to be eaten. By nature, then, unlike the bowl, the cone is edible and delicious.” Conn beams. “Whaddaya say, Perry Mason? Persuasive, no?”
“Yup, I want a waffle cone.”
Napkins in hand, they stand tentatively. Neither wants to part, perhaps there’s more to say. More perhaps to unpack about Purpose. Dirk makes an offering, “You know, I did have a dream last night.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, symbolic and everything.”
Conn whistles like a falling mortar round. “Out with it.”
“I’m by myself in a boat. It bobs around on the waves. I’m looking for something but no one is piloting the boat. It starts to rain, hard. I see something in the water, which is like black ink, or maybe oil because its prismatic and has a sheen. My heart jumps and I think, I’m happy. I’ve found it. But when I reach into the sea what I grab is soft and squishes out of my hand. I use both hands, I have to lean more to try and grab it, I’ve got it — just at that moment, my momentum takes me overboard. The water is so cold. I can’t breathe. I panic. I gulp water, it fills my lungs. As I’m struggling, realizing, uh — I see what I’ve grabbed is just a jellyfish. A stupid jellyfish. Not what I was looking for at all.”
“Jesus.”
“That’s it.”
“Dark, kid, real dark. . . . You might be a man after all.”
Dirk flushes and whispers, “I told you. I’m not a man. I’m an Enkidu.”
“And I told you, I don’t read manga comics.”
Early morning blue shades; Conn, half asleep, watches the shadow and light on the celling in his bedroom. Jellyfish. Of all things. He sinks again into the unfathomable unconscious.
He walks through the dense undergrowth. Brushing aside juniper, holly, all the annoying, sticky, thorny, pokey detritus. The trees form a perfect canopy above. Stars light the darkness through stained glass in the branches. He is searching for his brother. He took his own life when Conn was only–what? — fourteen, fifteen? Fifty short years ago, can you even believe it?
Afterwards he had read those who die by suicide become the trees that grow in hell. Of course Conn doesn’t actually believe in those sorts of things, not in this day and age, but it stays with you nonetheless.
Somewhere in this forest — in this vastness — must be a tree that truly is my brother. Has to be. But none of the trees speaks to Conn. He has an ax. It’s the proper metal. It has a gleaming edge.
Conn sips a glass of tepid tap water and stares at his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. Who is this old fart?
Conn taps the number 2 pencil against his coffee-stained teeth. He watches a robin on the window sill. It delicately balances its plumpness on its silly stick legs.
Despite himself, and perhaps despite his lived experience, Conn has begun to believe he can make a difference in Dirk’s life. The undeniable power of mentorship. Support. Guidance. Let’s say it, too, Resources. How could those not be helpful? He feels confident. He half smiles. I will make a difference.
Aggressive knocking rustles him from an enjoyable couch nap. A mass-
market copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses flips to the floor. “Hold on! Hold on already.”
He slides the brass chain and pulls the door open. The doorman looks nervously at the floor. “Hey Conn, you better come downstairs with me.”
“Why, what’s up? You okay, buddy?”
“Come on, you’ll see, better that you see. C’mon.”
8.
In front of the building, the usual street-level hustle and bustle is kept at bay by emergency procedure. Two patrol cars block the street. Sawhorses and patrolmen with annoyed, rude faces detour traffic. Angry shouts can be heard. Blue lights strobe the brick and pavement. An aid car stands by, its red lights are flashing too. Take your seizure medication, folks.
Because he’s an artist, Conn notices the pavement breathes the same shade of depressing as the inscrutable storm clouds above. A yellow cab rests on the far curb, unnatural in its apparent tilt and angle. A white sheet covers what must be a body lying under the cab’s front driver-side. An awful, terrible feeling of déjà vu grips Conn and squeezes his middle.
The doorman approaches. A patrolman follows. One seems as eager to please as the other to disappoint. “This is Mr. Silverhorn, officer. I believe he knew the, uh, victim.”
Conn looks at them both with sick, reddened eyes. “I did?”
“That kid who’s always hanging around here.”
The contents of Conn’s stomach turn liquid once more. “What?”
The patrolman flips the black cover of a Moleskine notebook and reads: “Dorothy . . . uh, Raschi.”
Relief washes over Conn. “Dorothy, you say? No, I don’t know any Dorothy.” Judy Garland, rest in peace.
“That’s what the school identification in her pocket says.”
“I’m sure it does but I’m telling you I neve’ heard a’ her.”
The patrolman hands Conn a clear plastic bag containing a photo identification card. Conn holds the card through the plastic and lifts it to his squinting eyes. Dirk’s face stares back at him with teenage insouciance. “I’ll be damned.”
“So you do know her.”
“As Dirk.” Conn, rather counterintuitively, senses his own deep state of shock take hold. “What happened?”
“Don’t know yet. If I were a betting man, I’d say she was hit by that cab. Headphones on. Jaywalking. But like I said, dunno.”
It can’t be. It just can’t be.
“Mr. Handel, can you take Mr. Silverhorn back inside? Detectives may want to talk. Looks open and shut, but they may have questions.”
“Sure.”
The empty bottles of single malt and vodka begin to overtake the kitchen. The trash can regurgitates them. Bottles lie knocked down like bowling pins. Platoons of empties stand at rest. Glass gravestones on the kitchen counter lord over all.
Conn sits alone and still. A tumbler full of amber liquid rests tenuously on his bloated belly. In his mind he thinks he can hear Ella sing Stairway to the Stars. Her contralto, pitch perfect. Conn remembers. He grew a moustache once to give the appearance of wisdom. After all, he was the youngest of the trumpeters. It was a mixed success. Conte looked at him, smiled, then ran a forefinger over his own upper lip. Hey, Kid, you got some business right here.
Today is the day. Enough. Enough drinking. Enough moping around. Today, Conn does not drink scotch. Today, Conn puts on his Pierre Cardin active wear and walks in the park. Conn watches nannies push strollers, kids play touch football, young adults romance. Today feels normal. Yeah right.
The park bench is cold and hurts to sit on but he doesn’t notice. Much. Conn watches the sun set beyond the river and meditates on forgiveness. It’s hard being human. It is so g-------d hard, and yet we don’t give people any slack. Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes then come tell me to hell with them. Hypocrite?
Yes, and self-indulgent. Listen. I forgive my dad for drinking himself to death. I forgive my mom, too. For not knowing who I am. I forgive them all. I forgive the agents, the lawyers, the accountants, all who view me as a deposit slip. I forgive the priest who told me everything would be gravy, in the end. I forgive my uncle for losing his wife and then his mind. I forgive the ice-cream scooper for his youthful charm, full life ahead, and blissful ignorance. I forgive Dirk for being Dorothy, or Dorothy for being Dirk (does it matter?). For being too chicken to be honest with me.
Conn stops and looks at the grass at his feet; the grass that grows and will continue to grow no matter how much concrete we pour on this island.
What do I know about it anyway? I don’t know what that kid’s life was like. What made Dorothy stop wanting the things little girls want? What does why matter? What the hell do I know about it?
Why would I expect a tree to be anything but a tree? Why would I expect a jellyfish to be anything but a jellyfish?
Who am I mad at but me?
Do I forgive myself?
Someday I’m going to close my eyes and never open them again. When it goes black, will I be me ever again?
