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14. THE EIGHTH HOUR
The tunnel seemed to grow dimmer, the sand higher, the lights fewer and smaller. At the same time, the light was less cold blue. The air seemed warmer here. Arthur was sweating by now, and had his coat unbuttoned. The canteen got lighter as he took swigs from it. The water inside tasted fresh and cool. It was a welcome relief from the dusty smell of this place. Dust rimmed his nose, and he occasionally took a swig of water just to wash his mouth out. This reminded him of movie scenes about staggering across the desert looking for some old French Foreign Legion fort, except he was in a tunnel and this was a desert not of sand so much as of time.
He continued to stumble across objects. In one place, he passed a forest of marble tombs. He just saw the tops of the monuments-elaborately carved pyramids, obelisks, eagles on globes, a huge acorn topped by an owl, a marble book larger than Arthur and open to pages of sugar-white hieroglyphics carved in fine relief. There were more markers, lost in shadows beyond those, but he had time only to continue forward. At one place, under an amber lamp in the vault above, he saw a human skull peering at him from the slanting side of a dust-drift. Could it be the remains of a wanderer like himself? Or was it the skull of someone lost at this point in the past, the way one lost those stray keys and coins and pens and paperclips?
His walk was relatively easy in patches where the sand was coarse and gravelly or glassy, but harder in places where the sand was very fine and every step required pulling his feet out amid ankle-deep slogging. The walking stick came in quite handy, but he was beginning to tire a bit.
He walked past a refrigerator, and a desk, and a large empty stone flower pot, and a statue of an elephant. A little later, he trudged past a statue resembling the Venus de Milo but carved from worm-eaten wood, and with knot-hole eyes that seemed to track after him so that his spine crawled.
The only sound he heard was the stick-stick-stick of his feet and the walking stick in the sand, and the occasional moan of a puff of wind over a dune. Other than the rhythmic sounds of his walking and the clock ticking in his pocket, this was a world almost entirely devoid of sound.
Finally, when he heard a strange yelping sound, did he realize it was also a world devoid of living things. He was alone here, walking away from his lost past, toward an unknown future as yet unglimpsed, and only now, for the first time, did he hear the sound of another living being. And what a sound! It seemed a strange, unearthly wailing-until he came over the top of a particularly tall dune and saw a pitiful scenario.
Downhill from him, to the left and off-direction as the tunnel snaked on, was a portal. The opening exposed a cramped and twisted town at night, with lights on in houses and shining out of the windows on to cramped, twisted streets.
What caught Arthur's attention more immediately, though, was a scenario going on just inside the tunnel. Ankle-deep in sand, an elderly man in rags stood holding a bottle in a brown paper bag in one hand, and a stick in the other. At his feet cowered a sort of plain brown mutt of a dog, a mix of half a dozen breeds, a medium sized house dog. The animal yelped whenever he raised the stick, and yowled whenever the stick fell against his fur. Luckily the old man reeled drunkenly in his tattered clothing.
Arthur felt a tidal wave of pain rising inside of him, almost choking his heart into stopping. "No!" he yelled. "No!" and ran toward the two. The stranger gave the dog another whack or two and then looked in Arthur's direction. He had an unruly shock of thin white hair that stuck out in all directions over his spotted scalp. He had a sharp, liquor-reddened face whose veins throbbed in blue webs on the paper-thin skin. His eyes were blue and crazy and filled with rage and contempt. "Stop it!" Arthur yelled as he ran to stop the beating. He tumbled twice, rolling head over heels down a dune, and arrived just as the old man raised the stick to hit him. At that moment, Arthur tripped and fell flat on his face, almost close enough to smell wine-vomit on the man's shoes. The dog, Arthur could now see from this vantage, was tied down by a frayed leash to a half-buried auto wheel rim, and couldn't run away.
"Get away from here, you crazy loon!" the old man yelled. Down came the stick, and Arthur cried out as he felt the sting up and down his back. Again and again the stick came down, but Arthur rolled out of the way. Next time, the stick hit the sand with a puff of dust. "You're in for it now!" the old man yelled.
"Oh no I'm not," Arthur said, rising. He was a bit old and slow himself, but the other was older, and drunk to the gills. "First," Arthur said, "let's take care of this." He took the half-empty bottle away, wrapped in a twisted bag. As the old man reached helplessly for his bottle, Arthur threw it as far as he could, and it shattered with a loud, satisfying pop against the tunnel wall. There was an equally satisfying tinkle of broken glass.
"No!" the old man cried feebly.
"Next, let's take care of this." He took the stick from the other, who now fell to his knees cowering. Arthur waved the stick, and tears filled his eyes. "You want some of your own medicine?"
The old man, who was toothless, wailed helplessly and held his arms over his head. "No! No! Please!"
"I should beat you with this stick and break every bone in your body!" Arthur was beside himself with rage, and it took every bit of restraint not to hit him over the head until the stick was reduced to splinters. "I hate you, old man! You rotten cowardly hateful old louse! You worthless, mean, drunken, selfish, twisted old bum!" He broke the stick over his knee, as many times as he could, until the pieces were too small and it hurt to slam them down. He threw the bundle of broken wood at the old man, and then shoved him so he toppled over and stayed lying in the sand. He still had his hands over his head, and his eyes blinked in reptilian selfishness, cunning, sheer survival, calculation at how to escape or even cause more hurt if possible. What a hateful old piece of work, Arthur thought as he untied the dog. He hugged the dog to him, and the animal whimpered gratefully. "Don't worry, old fellow. I won't let him hurt you anymore." He took the leash off, and the animal limped out of reach, but didn't run away. "Poor old fellow," Arthur said to the dog, "you're scared of people now, aren't you. Come along, I won't hurt you. I know where you need to go." He turned to the old man. "You're lucky I don't kick the stuffing out of you."
"Eh?" the old man whimpered, "eh?"
"You're completely out of your mind, aren't you?" Arthur stood for a minute looking at the old man. "I wish I'd seen you for what you really are. I thought you were someone big. You're so rotted out with your drinking that you've slipped around the bend. You have less going on upstairs than this poor dog."
"Eh?" the old man whimpered, licking his gums and lips with a pink tongue tip as he scurried in circles on his knees, still guarding his white-tufted head from a possible blow. "Eh?"
Arthur was startled to see that a second person had joined their tableau. About 100 feet away, high up on a sand dune, was a boy of about nine. The boy had an eerie, silent look about him, with large eyes deep as wells. The dog scampered and limped up the hill and ran in circles around the boy, wagging its tail. The boy leaned to one side and picked up a glass lantern, the kind used in rail yards long ago. An oil wick burned feebly inside, casting an orange light. The boy lifted the lamp high, casting amber light on his pale cheeks. His eyes looked all the more ghostly for it.
"Can you speak?" Arthur called out.
The boy gave the faintest shake of the head, but rattled the lantern, so that the glass funnel clattered in its cage.
"You want to guide me." It was a question.
The boy nodded. He pointed toward the village outside, below, under a full moon in an indigo-blue night sky.
"I'll follow you."
The boy scampered down the dune toward the village, and Arthur started after him. Behind, the old drunkard had fallen asleep on the sand. The dog circled around, barking happily for the first time, though it yelped every time it stepped wrong or twisted a bruised bone about. The dog sniffed around Arthur's trouser legs and barked urgently, as if telling him he must hurry up and follow. The boy paused once or twice, turning to point his lantern toward Arthur for a second before continuing on. Down they went, out of the tunnel into a windy chilly forest. The full moon illumined their path. Old mossy logs lay fallen here and there, glowing with phosphorescence. Large mushrooms glowed here and there like bone in the bleached light of the moon.
Down they went, into the village, where they walked on gravel paths at first, then cracked asphalt, and finally a neat mosaic of flat paving stones. Arthur felt something familiar about the place, but could not put his finger on its nature. Along the twisting lanes that climbed here and dipped there, most of the windows were dark now, and their people gone to sleep. They came then to a muddy yard at the end of a long wall of brown rocks overgrown with wild hedges. Arthur heard the clucking of hens in their roost at night, and the warning clicks from the talons of a rooster on patrol inside the wooden hen house. He heard a plaintive meow and saw a lean, cautious tabby cat hunkered on a wall. Its green eyes were luminous as they followed his every move. The boy went ahead, and the dog with him. The boy lifted a wooden cover, and the dog gladly escaped into the safety of his retreat. The boy briefly fussed over the dog's supper dish and water. Arthur heard the rattle of kibble on metal, the slurping of water, the wolfing of dog food, and a final prostration of gratitude at a last pet before the boy picked up his lantern and stood pointing to the rear door.
Arthur left the boy there, and went to the door. He smelled something good cooking, salty, cabbage, with a bit of meat in it, and onions or shallots, in a beef broth. He smelled spices he had first known long ago-cinnamon, parsley, rosemary. He smelled other things: rhubarb, strawberries, grapes. Wandering into the darkened kitchen, he picked up a wooden log and added it to the fire in a rosy shower of sparks. The wood smoke enveloped him, with that same sour hint of chimney tar he remembered now. Before he had time to savor another memory, the door burst open, and an elderly woman came running in. Her voice quavered as she spoke his name and raised her hands to embrace him. Her voice grew shrill with hysteria as she pawed him to her, and he closed his eyes and lost himself in the absolute bliss of her gentle hands that stroked his hair, and lingered on his cheeks, and grabbed his head to shake it gently like a ball. He threw himself into her skirts, wrapping his arms around her while he felt her tears falling on his neck and forehead. She hugged him to her and rolled him about like a long-lost marble. He heard her wailing above him while he let go of the terrible burden he had carried for so long, and almost fell asleep…except……except…
In his pocket, the watch ticked more fervently, and in the village an old metal bell started slowly pealing.
The fire was out, she was gone, and he staggered to the sink to support himself before he could fall over. He felt like a plant torn from its roots, or seaweed pulled up from the ocean. He cried out at the pain of separation. He groaned with the agony of separation and stood weeping by the sink. Was it raining outside? No, what at first looked like water on the window was really the tears flowing around his eyes, and through them he saw the lantern waving from side to side. The silent boy stood on a woodpile, one knee up on a log and his slim body angled at rest in side profile as he signaled with the lantern. Arthur knew what that meant. Time to go. His journey was not over yet. With one look behind him-the door dark and closed as if it had never opened, the fireplace cold and dark as if no fire had burned there in a long time, and the house devoid of warmth and cooking smells-Arthur plunged out the door and ran as fast as he could toward the forest. The boy and his lantern were a bobbing dot of light in the dark woods. Arthur half ran, half crawled and clawed his way up the slippery hill. The snow was real and cold in his reddened, numb fingers. The boy led him to the invisible spot where he could once more enter the tunnel. The watch in Arthur's pocket seemed to grow excited.
The village clocktower rang forth sleepily and tunelessly, one tired clang at a time, a second later the next, until it fell silent on the eighth stroke. The ninth hour was beginning as Arthur stepped through the slightly resistant membrane between the time outside and the time inside.
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