Walk with Me

Wim Hylen

Part I.  Captivity

I like the Sandpeople. They’re friendly, with their wide grins and lilting greetings.  “Helloooo,” they shout as I pass, waving their shovels. According to the Daily Herald, they reject materialism and embrace childlike simplicity. Hence, their fondness for sandboxes. Children resent the takeover of their space. Toddlers cry. The older ones give voice to their discontent. “Grow up, you morons,” they shout.

“Rest assured it is for a noble purpose, children,” Fred, the leader of the Sandpeople, responds in an editorial. “Please join us when you turn eighteen.”

I’m still on the fence about the Shadys, the ones who refuse to receive direct light and wear car antennae taped to their heads. You see them rushing madly to remain in the dark, playing hide and seek with the sun. The media has yet to determine what motivates them.  They don’t give interviews.

They beckon to me during my sojourns through the city.

“Come play with us, Norris,” the Sandpeople bellow.

“Join us in the shadows, Terence,” the Shadys whisper.

They must sense my disaffection, although they’re both wrong about my name.

Part II.  The Flight into the Desert

I’m shopping at the department store downtown, looking for a pair of umbrage slacks, which are back in style.

“May I help you?” a buxom saleswoman inquires. Her question strikes me as curious. May she help me? Yes, please, I think. Can you tell me why my life is slanted, why the world appears to be crumbling like a stale fortune cookie, why my reflection in the mirror is unrecognizable? I shrug, and then start to laugh in oddly girlish titters. I cover my mouth, pretending to cough. Then, for reasons I cannot explain, I break into a trot near the Lacoste polo shirts. By the time I reach the Ralph Lauren madras shorts, I am into a full sprint. I bend over, panting, near a bevy of stacked tweed caps.

Calmed by the activity, I stroll down Landrum Avenue, the limbs of cedar elms hanging exhausted above my bobbing head. An air of unexpressed sadness floats through the city, like the lazy flight of an aged eagle. In the distance, the spire of Saint Rollo’s shimmers in a torrent of light.

“Buy a bean, sir?” says a rag-clad urchin, brandishing what appears to be a snap pea in his outstretched palm. As I ponder the offer, a Sandperson, a long-limbed fellow, picks the offering from the boy’s hand and tosses a dime over his shoulder, apparently as compensation. “Follow me,” I hear the Sandperson say.  But I don’t. Or can’t. I’m not sure which.

Part III.  By the Rivers of Babylon

The disaffection is worse when I walk by the docks. The river is a breeding ground for trouble. The past is never far in this city, it flutters around me like a one-winged fairy. Here is the bridge where Tom Rooney, the magnificent blind saxophonist, practiced scales. And there is the cafe where Eldridge Kahn scribbled his opus: Moonlight is the Shadow of Love. If only I were alive during those post-war halcyon days when the city exploded in a riot of sound, color, and art. I toss a dime into the harbor as if it were a wishing well and think it is fortunate that mother is gone, never having witnessed sterility descend on her beloved town.

She came here in her early twenties, her eyes wide and her dreams big. Fresh from the farm, this provincial capital must have seemed to her the apex of cosmopolitanism. Through hard times, including my father’s early death, she maintained an eerily cheery outlook. As far as I could tell, her only concession to sadness was her penchant for mixing bleak bits from blues records with parts of old show tunes, patching them together in a sonic crazy quilt. I miss her so.

Part IV.  Wherein I Descend the Mountain in Shame, Having Misplaced the Stone Tablets

A quick description. I am of dark, wavy hair, olive-skinned, quite tall, and possessed of the finest sinewy limbs east of the Parkway, which terminate in a pair of kid gloves and calfskin boots. I wear my tunic sashed at the waist and dimpled at thigh level.

A gentleman in an argyle sweater hands me a pamphlet. “Our Savior has paid your debts,” he claims.

“No, I still owe,” I say.

He shrugs. Even the true believers have lost their fervor these days.

Are there not those, I reflect, who greet each rising of the orange ball with a salutation, who believe each day to be a gilded, royal opportunity? Are there not those who prefer their vanity and pride, their disorienting beverages, their limiting perversions, to genuine human contact? And are there not those who confuse the accumulation of wealth with love, who absentmindedly burst into tears in airport lounges only to turn crimson with shame when they realize their gaffe? Yes, all these and more, the Good Book tells us.

Part IV.  A Voice Crying Out in the Wilderness

As I walk past the Flat Tone building, near the corner of 13th and Gramundy, I realize I am only a block from the apartment where my older sister, Violet, lived for several years with her companion, Garston Nurdred, the Finnish painter. I spent many pleasant evenings at their kitchen table enthralled with their intellectual, bohemian discourse, and I am struck with a sudden urge to see the stately, red-brick facade again. I remember one evening when Garston, drunk on grappa, revealed a hitherto hidden vanity. “In my youth, I was the finest painter of poultry portraits in Helsinki,” he bellowed. “Here, here,” I exclaimed, clinking my glass with his. Violet blanched in horror. “Alas, who consulted the poor birds?” she mumbled.

When I arrive, a woman is slumped against the side of the building, dozing. A twig is nestled in her wild, antennae-draped mane. Next to her is an empty bottle of fortified wine and a rooster who stares at her quizzically, his head bobbing back and forth with confusion and concern over his fallen friend. Sunlight streams onto her forehead from slits in the surrounding edifices. A Shady who has fallen on hard times, I surmise. I recognize in her slack visage the fate of all those who dare seek the truth, the fruits of demon drink, the crumbling of thwarted desire.

Part V.  In Which I am Not Persecuted for Failing to Preach the Good News

Today I realized the depths of confusion to which I have sunk, the crux of which is this: I fervently believe, a belief not unlike a matron’s conviction that the Lottery is hers, that there was a time other than this one in which I should have lived. A period marked by a wild zeitgeist, a liver spot of hope peeking around the corner. Have I mentioned that until just four months ago, many of the citizens of this city rarely ventured outside except to straggle to the office or shovel food into their mouths at undistinguished eateries? That’s how bad it was. Then the Sandpeople appeared. Some claimed to recognize them. “Why that’s Tom, who in second grade ate paste with me,” someone said. “Surely that’s Zoë, with whom I once danced naked in the mermaid fountain,” said another. “I believe that is Joshua, whose father is a carpenter and whose brothers and sisters live here in town.” But we couldn’t be sure: the Sandpeople were circumspect about their origins, and we were without sufficient energy to investigate.

We were initially skeptical of these newcomers who ventured outside for questionable purposes. “Oh, aren’t they special? Men and women about town,” we sneered from the confines of our well-furnished cages. It was pure envy, I can admit that now. And then we began to notice the Shadys darting furtively through town. Then they started with the antennae on their heads, leading to charges of madness or, at a minimum, sartorial indiscretion.

Initially, their appearance felt like a cold swat of air from the Arctic, a cleansing breath. “Why, is it as easy as that?” we collectively and silently inquired. But alas, familiarity breeds contempt. And so we settled down to the frigid truth: there’s nothing new. A generation passeth and another cometh, and the one that cometh becometh dizzy and confused, then that generation passeth, etc.

Part VI. Maria, Molly, Margaret, or Manuela

I must confess: there is a woman. Her name is M (also several other letters of lesser importance). Her mouth is ample, her hips redolent of unspoken things, her hair a crumble of mischievous curl. Her skin is a tantalizing mocha hue. Our touch gives off electric jolts. We talk until dawn of a multitude of things: love, cashmere, marble, velvet. There is but one topic I have not broached: her favorite color. We’ll jump that hurdle when it arrives.

She believes in me. And I believe in her, as much as I can believe in anything since my pet turtle, Chumsley, was crushed during the General Revolt a couple of years ago. For a while, M was all I needed. But here is the cruelest trick of all: although my love is constant, the void has crept in and again occupied the center. Not an interior void, mind you. The absence is outside, a curious vacuum emanating from outside my door that sedates the gayest spirits, deflates even the highest leap. Oh M, be not afraid, nor faint of heart! I am here … somewhat.

Part VII. Woe to You, Poor City

There appears to be disturbance brewing. Something in the air: trembly, semiconductorish, elusively charged. Crowds throng the streets. They appear to be trying to express, and they have chosen loudness as their medium. Patches of noise borne by bullhorns and microphones float through the clouds. There is marching. Slogans are run up the flagpole. “Down with Exteriors!” “Renege on all Treaties!” “Free the Things!” “Sand is for Children!” M clings to me like one of Harry Harlow’s monkeys. I’ll admit it: I’m afraid.  We need only peruse the several books about history that remain to see what damage the rabble, when properly incited, have caused: the destruction of the stock market, the Second Nuclear War, the slaying of all domestic quadrupeds. Who will stop them? Not I. And certainly you’re in no position to do anything.

Part VIII.  Rejoice All Ye Who Mourn!

As quickly as it appeared, the chaos seems to have abated. I thrust my head outside the window and stare down the gap. It’s a silent as an uninhabited canyon out there. The authorities may have implemented the Encouragement of Quietness Decree. I’m not sure, I no longer read the dailies. But here’s the rub: there is something lurking, a connivance of joy building in my breast.

You can congratulate me later. But for now, roll away the stone that seals your cave! Come walk with me. See how the sun sets in a shower of red and gold over the Old City! Look how the Museum District glows at dusk. Tell me your hopes and fears. For now I can see as if from a great height, my passions muted, yet my love intensified. So I tell you solemnly:

Bless the humble Sandpeople and their sand. Let the Shadys inherit the earth. But their ways are not mine. We each must find our own path, and mine is through the labyrinths that snake through this doomed city. It is now clear to me. Why grumble at the current day, its prolix sterility, its maddening night terrors, the dearth of depth? For do we not have all we need, all anyone has ever needed: the sun in its beautiful agony, the moon and its somber joy, the sigh of the clouds, the breathless anticipation of a lover’s favorite color?

© 2019 Wim Hylen

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Wim Hylen’s work has been published in Four Chambers, Cafe Irreal, Crack the Spine, Boomer LitMag and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among other places. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona.