Read Online Gateways to Abomination by Matthew Bartlett - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Matthew Bartlett
Ads: Link
danger and ruin. Floret was bled dry and his corpse blew away in wisps and sheets on the heavy winds before the coroner could fetch it.
My tea is on the boil and it's been off the heat this whole time. The world is curdled and my shoes are all of the sudden too tight. I'm off to my nap. Don't come near me. Don't come near me.
t he last hike
God save us from girls who are into hiking , I used to say, until I met Janet. I resisted for a long time; I let her hike while I lounged on the couch; I gave her my old line about being an avid indoorsman...and she laughed it off, grabbed my hand, and dragged me in to the Massachusetts woods kicking, as they say, and screaming.
And who knew, but I loved it. It became our weekend activity, surrounding ourselves with trees, brooks, deadfalls, cliffs--all with a soundtrack of chirping birds and who-knows-what bumbling through the underbrush. I saw the morning sun bounce along the treetops and the evening sun make the leaves glow like orange-green fire. After a while I even became less convinced that our fate was to be eviscerated by bears. Not once did I even see a bear, though I did see a beautiful fox once, and another time, from a distance, a small mountain lion. I bought a backpack, boots, a poncho, a compass...hiking socks. Hiking socks!
Janet forbade our bringing phones, but she would bring a transistor radio, bless her heart. We would clear away twigs and brush and sit by the curve of a coruscating creek, eat peanut butter sandwiches, and listen to tinny classical music or operas from the UMASS station. It is only these memories of Janet--gone these many years--that I look back upon with anything like yearning. Not for her, sweet though she was, but for myself.
It was the radio, not a bear or a fall or a heart attack, that killed the man I was and stole the man I might have become. It is easier, somehow, for me to blame the radio. The surprising heft of the thing; the square, rusted speaker; the red vertical line all the way to the left of the green glowing dial; the dented, crooked antenna. It wasn't the radio, of course, it was Janet. She and the shadow that loomed just over her shoulder...tuning the radio to The Voice of the Mighty Connecticut. The Black Heart of the Pioneer Valley. 87.9. WXXT.
One week before we saw the man in the woods, we happened upon WXXT. We were enjoying a postprandial laze, listening to Handel's Tamerlano , when a wave of static washed over the music. Janet fiddled with the dial, easing it leftward until the aria resumed...only to be again obscured by white noise. A millimeter to the left once more and a voice spoke, clear and loud, as though the announcer were standing between us. I literally threw my iced tea into the air.
MUSIC FOR THE SICK, bellowed the voice, resonant, compressed, with a slight echo. GATHER TO YOUR RADIOS! COME TO MY VOICE, ILL AND UNKEMPT, RIDDLED WITH CANCERS, CRAWLING WITH PESTILENCE! TOUCH THE SPEAKERS WITH YOUR HANDS! AH! THERE! YES! Then the voice sank to a conspiratorial tone, almost a whisper. Janet inched up the volume. All of you weary and morose, despondent and despised, pickled and petrified, abused and abandoned! You are listening to Willard Vincent Winklepleck of the Warwick Winkleplecks! Your healer and your servant, your shaman and your hero, your familiar...and your friend. My pulpit is your preserve, my altar your asylum, my chancel your comfort! Come to me! Step over the trancep... I shut it off.
And Janet turned to me with seething hatred in her eyes, a thing I had never seen in a year of knowing her and did not care to see again. "Religious crap , " I said, with a whining, defensive tone in my voice that I was instantly embarrassed by. "What are we, in the deep South?"
Listen, said Janet, with the whispered reverence of the zealot, and she turned the radio back on. It was music now, that fearsome voice gone--but WHAT music! Violin bows shrieked against untuned strings in a furious frenzy.
My tea is on the boil and it's been off the heat this whole time. The world is curdled and my shoes are all of the sudden too tight. I'm off to my nap. Don't come near me. Don't come near me.
t he last hike
God save us from girls who are into hiking , I used to say, until I met Janet. I resisted for a long time; I let her hike while I lounged on the couch; I gave her my old line about being an avid indoorsman...and she laughed it off, grabbed my hand, and dragged me in to the Massachusetts woods kicking, as they say, and screaming.
And who knew, but I loved it. It became our weekend activity, surrounding ourselves with trees, brooks, deadfalls, cliffs--all with a soundtrack of chirping birds and who-knows-what bumbling through the underbrush. I saw the morning sun bounce along the treetops and the evening sun make the leaves glow like orange-green fire. After a while I even became less convinced that our fate was to be eviscerated by bears. Not once did I even see a bear, though I did see a beautiful fox once, and another time, from a distance, a small mountain lion. I bought a backpack, boots, a poncho, a compass...hiking socks. Hiking socks!
Janet forbade our bringing phones, but she would bring a transistor radio, bless her heart. We would clear away twigs and brush and sit by the curve of a coruscating creek, eat peanut butter sandwiches, and listen to tinny classical music or operas from the UMASS station. It is only these memories of Janet--gone these many years--that I look back upon with anything like yearning. Not for her, sweet though she was, but for myself.
It was the radio, not a bear or a fall or a heart attack, that killed the man I was and stole the man I might have become. It is easier, somehow, for me to blame the radio. The surprising heft of the thing; the square, rusted speaker; the red vertical line all the way to the left of the green glowing dial; the dented, crooked antenna. It wasn't the radio, of course, it was Janet. She and the shadow that loomed just over her shoulder...tuning the radio to The Voice of the Mighty Connecticut. The Black Heart of the Pioneer Valley. 87.9. WXXT.
One week before we saw the man in the woods, we happened upon WXXT. We were enjoying a postprandial laze, listening to Handel's Tamerlano , when a wave of static washed over the music. Janet fiddled with the dial, easing it leftward until the aria resumed...only to be again obscured by white noise. A millimeter to the left once more and a voice spoke, clear and loud, as though the announcer were standing between us. I literally threw my iced tea into the air.
MUSIC FOR THE SICK, bellowed the voice, resonant, compressed, with a slight echo. GATHER TO YOUR RADIOS! COME TO MY VOICE, ILL AND UNKEMPT, RIDDLED WITH CANCERS, CRAWLING WITH PESTILENCE! TOUCH THE SPEAKERS WITH YOUR HANDS! AH! THERE! YES! Then the voice sank to a conspiratorial tone, almost a whisper. Janet inched up the volume. All of you weary and morose, despondent and despised, pickled and petrified, abused and abandoned! You are listening to Willard Vincent Winklepleck of the Warwick Winkleplecks! Your healer and your servant, your shaman and your hero, your familiar...and your friend. My pulpit is your preserve, my altar your asylum, my chancel your comfort! Come to me! Step over the trancep... I shut it off.
And Janet turned to me with seething hatred in her eyes, a thing I had never seen in a year of knowing her and did not care to see again. "Religious crap , " I said, with a whining, defensive tone in my voice that I was instantly embarrassed by. "What are we, in the deep South?"
Listen, said Janet, with the whispered reverence of the zealot, and she turned the radio back on. It was music now, that fearsome voice gone--but WHAT music! Violin bows shrieked against untuned strings in a furious frenzy.
Similar Books
