Cycle by Frederick K Foote

I was a son of segregation born in a small Virginia village. My heritage was discrimination without the possibility of assimilation.

At age six, on my first day at our all-Black school, I played the fool and set myself down beside a strange, weird creature named Bernice Lighthorse.

The Lighthorse family was well past eccentric and accelerating beyond crazy. I knew all the Lighthorse children by sight. We all did. Bernice was stout, all about with a head of orange-yellow kinks, and piercing black eyes.

She said, “Hi, I’m Bern. I love to listen to the trees talk. What’s your name?”

“I‘m Rufus, and I can walk in the dark better than a cat.”

“Can you catch a rat?”

“You need to ask your trees about that.”

And right then and there we were friends.

Bern could fight like a warrior and curse like a sailor, but mostly she loved to tell stories and sit or walk in the woods and listen and learn.

We sat side by side in the last row in the classroom and listened to Miss Beck welcome us to the first grade.

Bern whispered, “Miss Beck sucks in a little of our souls each time she looks at us and she looks at every one of us.”

“What does she do with our souls?”

“She keeps them in a pocket in her head, and then when she goes home, she walks through her apartment door and into the heart of an oak tree where she really lives. She sucks on our souls all night and glows bright and the tree eats her light.”

“Wow!”

“Rufus, the tree is her mother. “

I reached out and squeezed Bern’s hand.

I said, “Look at Miss Beck’s alligator slippers. She was walking one day, and she saw Jack coming down from the Beanstalk. Jack had those shoes hanging over his back in a sack. She said, Jack, what have you got in your sack? He showed her those shoes. She said, ‘They are so lovely. I will give you $5 for them.’ And Jack said no. And she said $10. And Jack said, ‘They are not for you.’ She said $50. And Jack said, ‘I can’t sell you these shoes. They’re not meant for you, but I will give them to you and you’ll see what I said is true.’

“Go on, Rufus.”

“Miss Beck put on those shoes, and they were like gloves on her feet. They felt like the best foot rub she had ever had. And then those shoes walked her down to the train station, onto the train car, and off the train in South Carolina. She didn’t want to do none of that walking, but the shoes would not stop and she couldn’t take them off.   

They walked her down the road to a swamp past a big bull alligator on the bank into the swamp, and those shoes swam right off her feet.”

“Wow!”

And Miss Beck sat on the shore and cried, and the bull alligator asked her what’s wrong, and she said, ‘I am so far from home. I don’t want to be here. I have no shoes, and I’m scared.’

And the alligator said, ‘Don’t worry, they’ll be back, and they will take you back home but every now and again they want to come visit family and friends.’

“And the shoes came back and walked Miss Beck back home.”

Bern leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, and we were best friends and more, forever.

And for the next five years we told each other stories every day at school. And that was by far the best part of my education.

When we were 11 years old on a Friday night in June, Bern came down to my farm and spoke to me through my bedroom window, “Rufus, come on out here. I need to talk to you.”

I climbed out the window and we walked down to the barn.

“You got an urgent story, Bern?”

She shook her head.

“You want to go on a night hike?”

She shook her head.

“Somethin’ bad happen? You need to sleep here tonight?”

“Rufus, we movin’ tonight. Going to Alabama.

“Alabama? Tonight?”

“A night flight like the underground railroad. Except, we runnin’ away from bills and leans and loans and unseen things.’

“Will you come back? You could stay here. My folks won’t mind.”

“Rufus, you the best friend I ever had.”

“Bern, you my best friend always.”

“Rufus, I’m cryin’ like a baby.”

“Me too.”

We held each other and didn’t let go.

Bern finally pulled away.

“I got to get back. I got to go.

“Bern, I feel like an empty bucket, like the inside of me is all poured out.”

Bern poked her finger into my chest and it felt like an electric shock as she said, “You…,”  It was like I was vibrating to her voice, like I was a radio speaker.

She moved her finger and poked my forehead with the same shock as she said, “… know I will always be with you. Remember our stories.”

And she faded away. She didn’t turn away or walk or move away. She faded away.

It was a dream. It had to be a dream. But the next morning Bern and her family were gone.

***

I was in a daze for days.

I was fogged in forever.

I had no one to exchange stories with.

I was lost at sea and dying of thirst.

I was under a witch’s curse.

My grandmother bought me a large cardboard box with a slot at the top. She said, “Write your stories down and put them in the box.”

She showed me the side of the box where she had written, “Stories for Bern.”

My grandmother said, “Dream about your box of Stories for Bern, and she will get your message and write stories for you.”

I hugged my grandmother, and I hugged her every time I saw her, and I hugged her every time I thought about her. She was the doctor that cured me.

I twisted and turned, floundered, and learned, and ended up in the Air Force in San Juan, California with my boxes of stories.

I took my stories to college and spat them out in college publications and online.

And I wove my stories and weaved my stories, and my stories twisted and turned me into a lover, husband, and father.

My wife, Anna, understood money and finance better than we understood each other. Our daughter, Luna, was caught in the middle of our discontent.

And out of college, I got a job offer to teach playwriting in Fresno, California at a community college.

My family didn’t want to move to the paradise of Fresno. I went straight away.

Black, Brown, Asian, gangsters, and street gals, a few White students, and lots of wild talk, and a whole bunch of drama, conflict, and distrust.

I met them in the classroom. I was like a bullet from a snub nose 38 revolver. I told them, “We are going to the w-r-i-t-e place. Everyone is going to write a story. We are a fucking freight train and we will not stop till we have written a play this semester and we will produce it next semester. If you can’t or won’t get on this train step aside or we will run you the fuck over. Take out your paper and your pencil and write a story about you.”

Wow! It worked. Bern would be so proud of me.

And it did for three years.

And I was on the verge of divorce.

I chose the stories over my family.

And at the end of a draining rehearsal in the theater I looked up and saw and was seen and sensed and smelled this boney, pale, wiry, tall hillbilly, big eyed, black haired, woman staring down at me.

In my mind I sent her a message, “I’m going to fuck you from sundown to sunup and never let you go.”

She came directly to me and stood in front of me and said, “I’m going to fuck you all night and out of sight, but I’m not yours forever. I’m Klee.”

Klee was a conceptual and visual artist, and we merge perfectly into a fucking art machine.

In three years, we were the talk of California and in four years we had an article in the New York Times.

Klee said, “We’re so fucked. We’re publicity whores. We’re repeating ourselves and living off our past products. We’re a fucking joke.”

“That’s an overstatement. It ain’t that bad, yet.”

“We need to start over again in a new place. We need to be unknown. We need to renew.”

“Where will we go and when?”

“There is no we. We end tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? Tomorrow, is that even possible? We have contracts and commitments and–.”

Klee poked me in the chest with her finger and shocked me to my soul and she said, “You…” and she did the electric poke in my forehead. “…know we have always been together.”

She walked out of my life. Just like that. Gone.

***

I went to Santa Fe, New Mexico. I got a janitor job. I didn’t write a single story for a year. I talked to my daughter, Luna, every week. We exchanged visits. She’s not an artist. She’s an electrical engineer.

I liked her. She was strong and less angry as we got to know each other.

She came to me one day unannounced and unheralded and stood before me and said, “Pop, I got something, and I can’t shake it. But you…” and she gave me that electric poke to my chest, “…know,” She did the electric poke to my forehead, “…we will always be together.”

Frederick K Foote

Image: Pointing finger from pixabay.com