The Folkpole - Dessert
Treats of The Boot Ogur
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(From the Entrée):
“Escape from it all,” one of the soldiers suggested, just before the troop vanished around a jagged cleft. “Obtain an epiphany.”
Then Mr. Grey was alone.
…But not for long.
As he dragged his suitcase, violin coffin, and the heavy duffel-bag to the disfigured folkpole in the clearing, The Wind that Smelled like Rain arrived.
“Good afternoon, Wind,” said Mr. Grey. He rewrapped the anchor shawl in a professional tangle. The Wind immediately tugged it loose. “Come to grab those airs you left?”
“Mr. Grey, you dolt. I keep my gusts here,” She laughed. The gorse on the slope rustled. “I’m just playing with flowers.”
“Bit of a stark place for that. Did you get sidetracked?”
“Not at all, just watch!”
A tock later, The Wind brought a sudden host of windmill-dandelions soaring across the moor. The dandelions flew over and around Mr. Grey in dense flocks of twirling flower blades. Some smacked against his stony surface or the folkpole’s wooden one, and fell to the ground. Most flew on, migrating for lusher seeding ground.
The Wind made one more playful tug on Mr. Grey’s shawl. Then she chased the flowers down the slope. She called back at him as she flew. “Good luck with your reflection.”
“Any advice you can give?”
“Folkpoles aren’t my thing,” howled the distant Wind. “Try playing on it!”
Then Mr. Grey was all alone.
He took stock of the clearing once more. He looked at the scarred folkpole. Closer up the stitching and cross-graining looked less garish, more quilt-like. The skipping ropes made plastic tinkles against the hard earth. At the very base of the pole he saw the only natural flowers growing on the moor. Lilies of the Valley poked through where the wood plunged into the cracked soil.
The best way to start, Mr. Grey thought, might be to catalog everything he saw, heard, smelled, or felt. Just in case he had to take a test on the experience. He drew his pencil from its pocket holder.
Mr. Grey’s dry hands plunged into the leather duffle bag in search of parchment. Each item they encountered he added-to and sorted-on a separate mental list. Mr. Grey indexed the contents initially by the texture his hands touched, then by the shape his eyes beheld. First was a soft and thick bundle which became the bedroll. Then what felt like a potato sack full of wavy stones, which turned out to be his candy rations. His hands felt and withdrew firewood, kindling, oil, waterskin, soap, protective odor cologne (which touched Mr. Grey, as he’d only mentioned being out if it a dozen or so times), washroom parchment, and - in a crinkled heap at the bottom - writing parchment.
Mr. Grey ordered his camping supplies in a row on the hard dirt. On the first parchment sheet he listed those supplies (along with his own luggage and violin) in uniform, blocky letters. He folded this page neatly and tucked it into the plastic-lined, parchment-protector pocket of his robe. He sat in the center of a hopscotch square and crossed his legs. With his violin coffin serving as writing surface, he set down, in excruciating detail, everything his senses told him around the Folkpole.
The sun switched custody from the western horizon to the east. The regular speed and warm glow on its face suggested an amicable transfer. It threw an inky sliver of a shadow from the folkpole. The shadow moved along the ring of wise old stones as the day passed, each stone marking an even period.
Mr. Grey noticed the time-telling, inky shadow when it blotted his list. He looked up at the Folkpole sundial. He reached into a pocket, which was empty. He remembered he’d given Honeydew his ticker. Mr. Grey sighed through his nose. He would have liked to have the ticker now, even if it didn’t tell time. He would’ve waited until the metal hand of the broken ticker matched the shadow hand of the scarred folkpole. He could’ve pretended - for a moment - that things were normal.
Thinking of the ticker reminded Mr. Grey of Honeydew. He hoped she found ticker repair less confusing than he found folkpole epiphanies. He wished they’d come to this shrine together. Of course Mr. Grey, of all people, understood efficiency. He agreed in principle to their accomplishing different goals: him getting a lord’s sponsorship, her fixing his ticker. He felt disappointed, nevertheless, when he thought of how they’d spent the greater percent of this vacation apart.
Mr. Grey realized neither Honeydew nor Tom would have smiled at his passively sitting beneath the pole, waiting and doing nothing. He set the parchments aside. He set the violin coffin atop to keep them from The Wind’s larcenous airs. He stood in the hopscotch square and stretched; the airs unwrapped his shawl again. Mr. Grey glanced at the crooked mountain skyline. He rolled his eyes down the slope of the moor, and over the poetrees, and into the huge lake in the distance. He watched the sun arc toward the ruby wine.
Mr. Grey turned to the folkpole. “I’m not sure if this is what you’re after. I’ll give it a shot.”
He grabbed the nearest skipping rope dangling from the pole. He gave it a few test swings, making sure he had a good one.
Mr. Grey skipped around the folkpole. I must tell you, it wasn’t real ‘skipping’. To be precise, Mr. Grey walked around the folkpole at a proper pace, slowly winding the skipping rope around it. Occasionally he inserted an arrhythmic half-step into his walk. It felt amoral, but he tried.
He tightened his rope all the way around the pole. His dry hand met the frozen sap in the wood stitches. There was a sudden, sharp crack from above, like fracturing stone. Mr. Grey looked up.
An old hiking boot dangled by its laces from the top of the folkpole. Mr. Grey felt sure it hadn’t been there before; he would have added it to one of his lists. He confirmed this when the boot’s sole separated from its toe box. A long mouth of toothless gums showed in the space between. Mr. Grey looked up with a flat, closed mouth, disinterested eyes, an overwhelming feeling of wonder, and a pinch of fear.
The boot spoke in a spit-filled lisp. “Someone put the wrong shoes on, when they rose today.” The footwear guffawed with a leather flapping of its loose sole. Mr. Grey stared.
After a moment, the boot collected itself. “Oh well excuse me,” it spat crossly. It flailed, and its hard leather heel knocked against the top of the folkpole. “You’re obviously busy. I’ll make myself scarce.”
Mr. Grey cleared his throat. “Do stay, Mr. Boot. I’m new to folkpolery. You caught me off guard.”
“A novice you say?” The boot cleared its throat with a doormat-scraping sound. “That explains the sad playing. You’re fresh off the rack.”
“I hope it’s not rude to ask; are you an Ogur? Like the Long Faces?”
“We’re in the same group of friends.”
“You’re not going to… creep, though?”
“Not if you quit your stalling. What’s your business here?”
“That’s a good question. I wasn’t told what to do.”
Mr. Grey backed away from the pole, giving him a better angle on the worn boot. He stepped to the hopscotch square next to his belongings. The sun at his back threw Mr. Grey’s outline towards the folkpole. The boot, he saw, had tiny bug-eyes in the holes where the laces would have gone. Only by the top holes was it laced to the pole.
With every S sending spit flying, the boot asked, “You’ve got an issue don’t you? Give me your symptoms.”
“The problem is my playing. With the violin,” Mr. Grey added hastily, “not with the folkpole.”
“I’m not a master. See a well witch for lessons.”
“I consulted a well witch. Nesting-Inside-Pots.”
“I’ve heard her name once. Did you absorb anything?”
“She gave me lessons. Time poured forth in her Oh Well. I grasped what she taught.”
The old boot knocked hollowly against the rough grain. “So what’s your problem?”
“It’s grand enchanting.” Mr. Grey heaved a breath and sat in the hopscotch square. He clasped and unclasped the latch of his violin coffin. “I’m supposed to act silly; learn how to relax. People say that’s key. But I’m not a silly sort…”
Mr. Grey felt a sudden, twisting pain in the arch of his left foot. Thinking the mountain hike had left him cramping, Mr. Grey uncrossed his legs to stand. Then he saw the laces on his left shoe. The ordered Xs of grey string strained against the eyelets, constricting the quarters against his foot with the sound of stretching canvas.
Mr. Grey reached in alarm to loosen the loops. But the laces suddenly went slack. The pain faded.
Mr. Grey stared at his plain grey shoe, then looked up at the old boot.
“Oh you betcha that was me,” said the boot in answer to the unasked question.
Mr. Grey said, “Sorry, Did I give offense?”
“That last thing you said. It’s drive-through stupidity. We’re all silly sorts.”
“My face, my body, they don’t…. They’re not emotive.”
The boot spit road dirt as it laughed. “Talk about understating. I saw your dancing.”
“But you called me incorrect.”
“Do all fiddlers make faces? Or flop around stage? Is that the scene now? And those aren’t rhetorical; I’m not up-to-speed.”
The boot looked at him, it’s many eyes all expectant. Mr. grey considered, and said, “I suppose they don’t.”
“That’s solacing news to hear. It would be tasteless. Too overproduced,” The boot Ogur smacked against the pole. It kicked to a more comfortable position on the scarred wood. Mr. Grey sat still, waited, and listened.
The boot went on, “You don’t need a silly face, or silly movements. Just silly thinking. Just be easy with yourself. Make jokes with yourself. Giggle with yourself. That’s one purpose of fiddling; share inside feelings.”
Mr. Grey placed his palms against the hard earth and leaned back. He stuck his left shoe out straight as a precaution before speaking. “So the fiddle looks the fool, in grand enchanting? Not me directly?”
This time the right foot shot with the cramping pain. Mr. Grey jerked his other leg straight. He lunged for the twisting laces - his body shifting from obtuse to acute - but they were already slack.
Mr. Grey set arctic-stone eyes on the folkpole boot. He took both shoes off and placed them neatly together in an adjacent hopscotch square. He set his knees at an exact right angle and his feet on the ground. The ground’s cold seeped through his grey socks.
The boot said, “Again you’re saying it wrong. Why not be wiser? Fiddles aren’t foolish,” The boot spat a chunk of caked mud off to the side. “Well, sometimes to their owners. But that’s not the point. Fiddles are just tools. Converting feelings to sound. Fervor makes music.”
Keeping a wary eye on his shoes, Mr. Grey said, “What if I play the same notes - exactly the same - as fervent players? Can I emulate that way?”
Mr. Grey watched with safe feet as the laces on his unworn shoes strained against the canvas. The shoe Ogur huffed.
This went on for some time. The inky folkpole shadow spun to bring in the sunset. The boot’s tiny shadow sat at the tip of the folkpole’s, warping as it fell on the gorse beyond the ring of stones. Mr. Grey’s shadow stretched toward the pole - as though longing to meld with the ancient totem - but never quite touched. All the time the boot Ogur spat, smacked against the wood, and tightened the laces on Mr. Grey’s shoes. It tried again and again to impart some wisdom, Mr. Grey felt sure. But he struggled grasping a lesson without facts.
The boot was mid-sermon about a silly joke it had once told a fellow piece of apparel. Suddenly Mr. Grey thought he had an idea what the boot was walking toward. He of course waited for it to finish without interrupting. Then he said, “I understand now. I have inside jokes as well. I’m just telling them… through my violin?”
“Tell me an inside joke then,” said the boot with a spittley leather sigh.
“At my home office, once when filing address forms, I sorted oddly. I changed the method; using chronological, not by random seed.”
Mr. Grey pictured himself smiling. He didn’t actually make a smile, but the one he imagined looked natural.
The boot asked, “What’s a random seed?”
“It’s a special bean; you chew it for the order. That isn’t the point. My sort was unique. It meant the address parchments, they were in order. Quite the novel farce. The parchment miners would laugh.”
The Ogur narrowed its eyelets. “That isn’t silly. That’s just simpler for browsers.”
The laces on the empty shoes tightened pointlessly. Mr. Grey didn’t notice. He went on, “I recall the mirth. I think I understand now. How to play relaxed.”
Mr. Grey opened his coffin. He took the violin from its bed; the bow from its cradle. He stood. He tightened the bow and tuned the strings with measured twists.
The boot stopped thudding against the wood. It glared at Mr. Grey though its many eyes, but let him continue.
Mr. Grey withdrew from the clearing. Not physically; he remained in his hopscotch square. He pulled his senses inward. He didn’t forget the clearing, or the folkpole, or the boot. But he stopped worrying if the boot would like his play. Instead he thought of his parchment-sorting joke. He remembered the laughter - internal laughter - at the absurdity of chronological order. The memory came easily. The ease massaged the tension from his arms and fingers.
Mr. Grey focused on the music, and played.
There was a headstone’s remorseless stillness in Mr. Grey’s face. A stillness in conflict with the explosive, beautiful, trilling melody springing from the violin! The dry grey fingers and their boxy nails crept across the instrument’s neck like mechanical spiders. But they pressed from the strings a flawless tone; at once crystal and vivid like cathedral windows, and malleable as maple syrup. The notes drifted, fluttered, flowed over the clearing. They leaped through the hopscotch squares, danced around the folkpole, and dashed in the wild gorse.
And such a scene for performing! As the violin sang, the broad azure of the sky and dazzling yellow of the sun settled into a uniform purple puddle. The folkpole of dense, knotty, scarred wood blushed with coffee-brown whirls, its rough grains buffed caramel-smooth under swirling notes. The music danced in the tall grass, and the lemony tips of the piney plants danced with them. Though Mr. Grey stood stoneish, the vibrant scene around him danced to his tune.
With a final flourish, Mr. Grey pulled the bow from the strings. The last notes of his performance echoed away into the distant ridges.
The boot Ogur fell inert to the ground. Now it was just an old boot. Mr. Grey put it in his suitcase with the rest of his stuff.
A grand treasure for a grand enchantment.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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