Jack chapter 6
Do you want the big music?
before the laughing
tears start
If the feast she’d promised was a small one — you couldn’t say
they were short on wine—with, for three people, the giant skin full,
still on the platform, propped up now by a heavy beam
because it was way too heavy to move until a dozen gallons
or more were drawn from it, which, Jack thought, even
if they had all three been drunks would take weeks.
Till then, he wondered—with the lift thus disabled—
what would they do—once the current tub was emptied—
for water? Rappel down to the river for each drink?
When they’d finished with black bread—and the wine that chased it—
a salad of flowers—wine chased it—cheese and field peas—
and the wine that chased them—
the hostess
put
a blue
wool blanket behind
the golden harp
giving a
background
to its vibrating pictures. “It’s easier to see
like this
in the open, here—don’t
you think?”
It was, they nodded. And wine
chased the nods.
Solomon told his wife—
“Apple Jack big-whispers, ‘hello.’
Jack looked up. He knew they meant
the small giant—no larger than an apple tree
in a chicken yard—who traveled with Tall Poignyance and
Grinning Littleman. They had to mean the little giant
Jack himself had wrestled, years ago now. So,
he was called Apple Jack, was he, the one
who had tricked Jack into “winning” his own stash
of this wine? Then Tall had laid the giant skin,
as deliberately as you’d fasten a doll’s button,
across Jack’s own old mule’s back. The long gone
soft loud liquid unfolding, filling the giant skin’s
new contours, sounded right there in this present night
beside him, right beside his ear. See,
the wine had him already.
The laughing tears would start shortly.
Jack marveled at finding normal sized people
who knew these beings well enough to receive
big-whispered casual greetings.
“To Tall Poignyance”—the woman
lifted an imaginary glass—just like
the real one full by her plate, Jack thought,
attributing to her hand
that skill of suggestion, though we might also
link it to the wine’s giving Jack the power, or the
weakness, of confounding the compound
of the imagined with the actual we take
for the real.
Sol said, “Speaking of Tall,
let me say, before
the laughing tears start,
“he thinks
we should not do the mission at all.”
It was the wine that made Jack have to fight
an impulse to grin, as Sol continued, “He thinks we have
a decent chance to succeed. He admits it is
a ‘good’ action, ‘relatively,’ as he says.
But he says that’s just the problem—by dealing
within good and evil we inevitably kick in
duality—
so we can only
“‘redistribute fortune.’ For every prisoner we free
somewhere another one is taken, perhaps in quite
a different manner. We’d only
“’stroke the churning,’ he says. And even
the beneficiaries of our actions would be ‘charged
with delay of destiny.’ Of course
“this was Grinning Little Man
actually doing the talking
after—thankfully—only one
“hillside-of-shale-shaking
sentence
from Poignyance himself.
“Little Man
knew the spiel well
and acted quite the authority
“holding forth upon it.”
The woman asked—“What does he mean,
‘relatively’
good action?” She asked.
Solomon sighed. He might
not have noticed he had lost
Jack’s attention.
“It could
be argued — Lord knows it is
argued
that the activity at the Highway Troll’s camp
is
“not so different from our introducing
an irritant into oysters to cultivate pearls.
Or — Little Man actually said this to me,
as if we a pair of giants in an argument
over a couple a tubs of beer — ‘not worse
than a non-vegetarian giant eating
people.’”
over
the flapping world to see their little house
Jack’s mind had skipped from that hilly country—back over farm lands
the wine rode his blood, and back over wheat fields, back
over pastures, flying powerfully as a thunder shower
his thoughts went homeward
because the harp
was playing
now
a simple old song, one
his mother had liked, and the presence of the giant wine skin
as much as the wine itself took him over the flapping world to see
their little house, where to this day what was left
of his own stash of the wine of tall poignyance was hid
in the hay loft. His second
cousin and
his second cousin’s wife — he rented the old place to them
for next to nothing — called it “that old stuff” and would
leave it alone — All these thoughts on the outer
circumference of remembrance — At the center —
his mother’s glowing pipe bowl. Was it her tears
or his own that blurred the red yellow burn?
What harm for the old lady to sip the giant draught and watch
thru laughing tears the smoke of her pipe taken
into the admixture of twilight? singing to herself —
not all that well — this same song the harp played now —
Wrap me around
In your arms so strong
Stand over me
I feel I belong
Wrap me around
So sweet I could bleed
I see your power
But I feel your need
She would sing it over and over, as far back as Jack could remember,
the melody maybe changing, but never the words, and between the wine
and the harp’s wondrous accuracy of reproduction,
logic loosed the notion most likely his mother had sung
that song when she nursed him. Most certainly
she had, suddenly he knew.
He lifted his real glass to an imaginary clinking—offered
a delayed return of the woman’s toast, “To Tall Poignyance.”
it was the wine
Jack didn’t notice, as he hadn’t been listening to Solomon,
that he offered the toast at a point in the conversation
that made it seem Jack agreed with the giant’s advice
against undertaking Solomon’s mission. He did not notice
when Solomon looked at him sharply.
What Jack
was thinking,
still holding in his hand the glass he had bumped
against empty air, was ‘it rings like very good crystal.’
Maybe these glasses, like so many things here, came out
from the lower ‘door’ down around on the side of the rock.
When he thought of the rock he looked toward it, huge
in the bright moonlight. The moon moved west
and the rock’s shadow sneaked up the hill backwards.
It was the wine that made Jack want to go cut
a piece of that shadow, like cake,
and bring it back for them to smell for pleasure.
“The wine is good,” he said aloud.
“To Tall Poignyance,” the lady said,
raising her arm again.
Over a distant ridge just then dipped the giant lightening bugs
which, last night, had lit up the river water and the mule’s inebriate climb.
A moving black cloud passed under the moon and in the new
darkness the far fireflies gold illumination seemed to bring the stark trees
on the hills below them into being all over again every time they signaled.
Tonight was Solomon’s turn to be
impatient to
get something said.
“Though it is
permissible certainly,
a good thing even, to do
“what is
a ‘good thing’
inside
whatever ones world is at the time,
you’ll be disappointed if you expect
any improvement, however real,
to cause a continued perception of
increased well being.”
“We knew that,” she said. She may have noticed
Jack’s inattention
for she did not hide in her voice siftings of
an ash of anger.
“Why go to all this effort
down here
that does only temporary good in just
one place at a time?”
“Because, my dear, down
here
is the only place I can love you.”
Just then the cloud moved off the moon and the rock
and its shadow leapt into prominence again. Its startling appearance
seemed a consequence of his words. It was the wine.
The shadow of the rock backed up the hill toward them like orchestral punctuation.
She smiled;
then she sighed; then
she smiled then
looked thoughtful. Then
she said, the anger much softened, “I don’t think
we should do the mission.” She
started to laugh. . . .
“And I don’t want you . . .”
her laughter increased at such a rate
by the time she finished her sentence . . “going . .”
it
seemed like the punch line to a joke .
. . “to
spoiled by the storyteller’s own laughter.
Jack watched the fireflies.
They were coming closer.
this music fanned her laughter
The harp
abruptly switched music. It played again
its Handel-like double concerto for harmonica
and whoop-holler. This music fanned her laughter
for it flared up to the point
it became voiceless
almost alarming
and Jack looked up
at the woman—who had fed him, had given
or loaned him clothing—who had
into his story telling bluntly dropped argument
slight as bean seed—who’d heard,
that afternoon, the most intimate details
of his marriage and who, more than that, for two
days now, had known his name.
The wine
said to him
she was his
beautiful friend now—how come he
seemed to know her from forever? the wine asked—
she sure had pretty little ole titties the wine said—
but, the wine went on, other
than as Solomon’s wife,
you don’t know
what to call her.
So Jack said, “What
is
your name?”
A solid little smile formed
among her liquid laughter.
She regained her voice
and answered,
“Ikon Knott Seayminaim.”
“Well, I kant SayYourName, either,”
Jack said.
She—“Kant you, Immuael Jack? So
what would you call me?
Jack—“I thought you were a Gail. I would
call you, Gail Gordini.”
She—“Oh, I’m Italian! Half
Italian. My brain is Italian, I bet.”
Solomon—“Where on earth
did you get ‘Gordini?’” as if
the Gail part were logical.
Jack — “I have no idea.”
it
was the wood that was precious
The golden frame of the
harp
has dark
streaks that
resemble wood grain. So skillful
the elfin smith had been, it looked
like a wooden harp Midas might have touched
accidentally and jerked his hand away quick enough
it retained the breathing as well as the streaking
of wood.
The harp’s
playing around
with bird song that had seemed
that morning disinterested paid off now.
It changed tunes and tonalities again and again
and issued melody assembled from
the sub-melodies of bird calls but with a linear sweep transformed
to fugue by an effort toward spatial spread topographic on purpose
and beautiful by accident as flawless as if it had never interrupted
practice of bird call
to tell naughty princess stories
and honk out donkey strong songs.
Arpeggios of pure harp tone
moving behind it—you could hear the wood
in the gold and it was the wood
that was precious.
what
this bird bold melody looked like
Together Jack and ‘Gail’ had looked at the strings
to see what this bird bold melody
looked like.
. It seemed abstract at first but
trying to figure out
what was funny about the picture’s evolution
they began intermittently to see flashes of objects in action
in the processed bird music. First,
since her husband sat across the table where only the top of his head
showed on the harp frame, Jack and Ikon Knott saw his dark hair’s reflection
make, as he moved forward and back, a growing
and shrinking hat like Abraham Lincoln’s. So, for
the moment, it was dignity
that was funny.
Then — “You are in there,”
Gail
said to Jack,
“maybe.”
With more surprise she said,
“I
am in there!”
Now it was Solomon’s time to laugh.
Neither one said
in the harp’s picture they were naked
and you couldn’t be sure they were the way
the pattern of colors splashed
like the mosaic on a blue jay’s back when it flips its wings to hop
making them no sooner naked on the screen then not there at all
but you could not deny that what might have been their brief appearing
coincided with peak moments in Solomon’s laughter.
Ikon Knott opened her
gown
and looked down at herself,
seemingly
unaware of
the presence of
Jack
or
her husband,
as if to study
to find
differences—a more
tangerine color of the nipple
than the pale one on the harp
maybe.
If they had talked about it
Jack would have agreed with
an assessment
of
very little
difference
between what
he saw
in the open world now and
what flitted on the screen;
tho Jack’s interest was only
very marginally in the accuracy of the harp, hers
from the concentration on her face,
seemed to be entirely
on whether that was really what
she looked like.
Solomon sent to Jack an “I don’t
know
what
she’s
doing!” shrug.
in from the diaspora of their separate
musings
The harp grew
quiet
suddenly
and then
dark.
Then
a female
voice
came from within it—
sharp—
speaking, half
shouting—over a single bass drum’s
simple pounding—
“Jack!
“Jack!
“Jack!”
Pulled in from the diaspora of their separate
musings they all looked at the harp
and
saw —
Jack himself saw —
Jack
himself — his bearded face
on the wavering screen
but
when
his face
disappeared
for a beat
straw
flashed there —
the focus abnormally
clear. “I
smell the straw,”
Ikon
Knott said. It had been there
so briefly the night space
in front of harp was confused.
“That is the prison camp straw,”
Jack said.
Solomon asked, “Jack, do you
understand this?”
He opened his mouth
to say no and had
already shook his head when
his mouth said,
“I know
one thing.
“When I told you
about
Sweet Talkin’ Man.
I left something out
because till now I didn’t think it pertinent.
There on the giant beanstalk, hiding with him in the crimp
in the giant leaf behind the shack that the guards
watched the prisoners from,
when I turned my head one time I noticed past
where that toothless fellow’s
image
would be
on the reflective frame of the harp,
“I could only
see a woman, one who did
and did not
look like him. (For one thing she had
all of her teeth.) He saw
me see this and pointed
thru the window.
An almost normal mirror—although the images had
too much blue shadow—hung on
a wall to reflect
a maximum
angle
on
the prisoner’s yard.
“I slowly came to understand an
inversion
of male and female
had to be made
to follow all the players in
the underlying weave of action
from one sight to the other. It was hard
to match a prisoner with its other in the mirror because
not only was the sex different but frequently the ages too
so that an old woman could be a baby boy in the glass
and a twenty year old man might be, in there, an older
woman. Perhaps I studied for as long as half an hour
before I suspected the pattern.
“Sweet Talking Man could see
when I got it. He said, ‘sometimes
you need to remember this
‘to understand what’s goin’ on,’
pointing at himself
as the woman in the reflecting frame. She smiled
out at me and nodded her agreement.
‘But most of the time’ he said,
‘it don’t matter. Sometimes
I look
in the mirror, and sometimes
out the window—it
don’t make no difference
in
the
go
rounds,’ was how he put it, ‘which one
‘is
the man and
which the woman.
It’s just kinda like backwards or something.’
“I asked him, ‘But which is the truth?’.
“He said, ‘Son, They ain’t
no truth out here. Where you
been?’
“I kept after him, ‘But
when you are back home
are you a man or
a woman?’”
Prison camp straw flashed over the harp strings again—
On and off like a power failure—then
it stayed dark, the strings
as dumb as the frame itself
until
the woman’s voice came again—
Jill’s
voice, he knew it now to be —
“Jack!”
as if out of nothing.
Then Jack’s face, blurred over the strings,
said with the feminine voice, synchronized
this time,
”Jack!”
“It’s Jill,” Ikon Knott said.
Solomon asked—“Why do you say that?”
but his doubt had no courage.
“Jack!”
“It’s Jill,” she said again. When she said it
the second time it seemed twice true
Jill was there with them like the 4th man
in the fire with Shadrack, Meshack,
and Abendigo. Her voice’s Jack face on the strings
spilled elongated from the inside out
onto the gold-wood frame, toward meeting
Jack’s outside face from within the image
over the harp’s strings.
he not only had no plan he had no bean
seeds
Jack—“I have to go get her.”
Ikon Knott—“Of course we do.”
Solomon—“if you are right
that it is Jill,
she will be in the small
coop, the second one.
There are reports that they isolate
there those captured humans
whose vibe is especially valued, for
rarity and color, as accent color
in their weaving. Jill
would be one of these.”
Well, Jack wondered did Ikon Knott tell her husband
of his unusual marriage or were his ex’s tastes
so well known a traveler could well have heard of them?
“To get her out,” the host continued,
“we proceed
in what we are already doing. We
gather provisions.
Tomorrow
Jack and I will travel to
Jack knew he could not hurry
to Jill—even if he had a plan
it would revolve around bean seeds
and he not only had no plan he
had no bean seeds—so
dreading to see the face again
dreading
to see the face
again
he took the
harp to his tent
came back
to
find
the man and woman
kissing
the tears
off each
other’s faces.
He started to turn around quietly and leave them alone
but Ikon Knott saw him
and said “oh”
then she said “goodnight Jack” and
pulled her
husband
by the arm
and they walked off hanging on each other
up the trail toward
the big tent.
night’s aggregate singing
Jack
walking away toward the guest
tent
could see
thru
the open flap
where he had placed the harp
back in front
of the folded seagreen blanket. For a moment
he thought with relief
the harp had developed the taste
or at least the disinterest
not to picture them.
Then
he realized or
the wine made him believe the darkness
over the strings was that of
their tent instead of his.
So he stopped and
sat down beside the trail
to be
alone
in the sweetness of night breath—he wanted to enter with eyes and mind
into the moon and wine light on the trees and deep shadows spread far
across hills beyond rows of hills beyond rows of hills—the earth
could have been entirely moon lit rolling hills covered with trees naked,
except for tiny dangling catkins opening, for all he knew at the moment—
the earth could have been a rumpled giant’s blanket with that patterned picture
on it and Jack way less than an infant among its fibers,
alone in
nights aggregate singing.
Whatever
smears green all over in summer, he thought,
must be also compelled
by moon light
in spring time
to spread,
every bit as widely, animal singing. He got the thought
maybe it was possible to feel the presence of that Whatever
and he tried that
but he did not keep his mind on it
because now he could hear the silence doubled
now he could hear the silence doubled
up the trail toward
their tent
for
real
and
from down
the trail
he could hear it
rendered by
his harp.
And
even closing his
eyes
did not hide
his knowing they
were washing each other with tear
and tongue as solid in the tumbling darkness
as the subtle sound of their kissing
furrowed the silence.
His had wept so continuously the wet from his eyes
drained down over his lips and
he could feel by the taste of his own crying face
how wet and salt heavy Solomon’s
beard had to be now, absorbing
their double flow of laughing tears.
in the castle in your eyes, in the secret tower there
And when he finally entered his tent
he was displeased to hear
the harp relaying a talk
between Ikonknot and Solomon.