John - Version 3

Now I don't like the other new start, so I've had an idea: I'll start the same story idea over and over (and over?) until I hit one that intrigues me!  Or not.  It'll be an exercise in variation.  Like Bach.  Or not.

Three men rode into town on elegant horses, the fire of the setting sun ablaze behind them.  To Cara, they looked like one of the shadow cut-outs the traveling jester created to tell his stories when he came through in the dead of winter, heading to the capitol, hoping to impress a royal into hiring him.  The young man was impressive enough on the young folk of this small town, and Cara had even begun learning to juggle because of him, much to the detriment of the potatoes in her grandmother's larder.  By this time, Cara had managed to keep three aloft for as many as five passes, which so amazed her she dropped the abused tubers with a cheer that caused her grandmother to ban her from the stores.

John - A New Continuation

I found that I stop writing when I don't like the direction a story is going, which is the wrong action to take!  I should keep writing anyway, even if it's a new piece.  I mean, duh: nulla dies sine linea!  So here's me trying a different way of getting into "John".

People starting seeing a boy at the witch's shack and a rumor went up almost immediately that she had created him out of mud and blood and that he had no soul.  Despite the rumor, people still came to Griss in the dusk and dark for care of their spirits, luck or misfortune, and, always, love.  Those who came to the old woman noted that the boy seemed just a boy, if quieter than was natural.  No one dared ask her.

When her grandfather's inn lacked the fullness of business they needed to pay the bills, Cara's grandmother pressed a coin into her small hand and told her to get a charm from Griss the Witch.

John - Continuation of 51, 164, and 168

Note: this continuation combines three previous story starts in some fashion, #51, #164, and #168.  At least, that's what I'm intending to do right now!  We'll see...

Nobody ever called him "Slow John" to his face, but that's what the townsfolk called him every other time.  He was, after all, just a boy, and it hurts to be labeled.  Cara was sure he knew about the nickname, though, and, further, that he wasn't nearly as slow as he seemed.  He was, as her friend Rachel whispered, mysterious.

It was during the yearly school session all town children attended, before the long days when there was too much work to be done, that John appeared.  Cara heard later, from her grandfather, how John had been apprehended by Harold, the Watcher on duty that day, peering into windows in town and sniffing around kitchens.  After exhausting his patience with the uncommunicative boy, Harold brought him to Old Fell Inn.

"He was here?" squeaked Cara, looking around as if expecting to see a boy hiding in the corner.

Cara's grandmother and grandfather, Old Fell himself, laughed, "No, Cara, but we did feed him."

Grandma Neen clucked her tongue, "The boy wouldn't answer any questions, and they still don't know how long he's been out on his own or where he could be from."

"But the little bugger did eat, didn't he!"

Cara couldn't imagine a boy who didn't have a home.  When her own parents had died, her grandparents immediately took her in and raised her.  An idea came to her, "Was he a runaway?"

Grandpa Fell shook his head, "Not unless he'd run away as a baby.  That boy is more animal now."

"How does that happen, Grandpa?"

Her grandfather began to answer, but Grandma Neen hushed him, "She doesn't need to hear about all the pain in the world, Grandfather.  Cara," she chided, "finish all your dinner.  There are starving boys out there who would love to have all this."

For the remainder of the meal, all Cara could think of what how the steaming stew and brown bread her grandmother baked would taste to someone starving.  She pictured herself alone in the world, wandering the woods, the clothes on her back wearing down thinner and thinner as her body wore down the same.  How did the boy sleep at night?  How did he keep warm?  Cara, being only seven, was not allowed to light a fire.  Though, as her grandfather reminded her, she was old enough to help with the dishes.

The next morning in the schoolhouse, the animal boy was the main topic of conversation.  Rachel, friend of Cara and daughter of the the man who found the boy, Harold of the Watch, was the center of attention, as she so enjoyed.

"We're calling him John," Rachel lectured as the other children tried to make a nickname stick.  "And," she added with a pause, "he's going to come to school."  The buzz became speculation as to when he would arrive and what he would do if he had never been to school before and if he only grunted and if he had learned to use a proper bathroom.  Cara saw Rachel frown when Miss Helen called them all to sit for their first lesson, math.  Rachel didn't like to be interrupted.

The answers to the children's questions came sooner than they expected, and not from Rachel but from the new boy himself, when Rachel's father brought him to the schoolhouse after lunch.

Miss Helen always had the children sit quietly after lunch for ten minutes.  She said it was "for digestion", but Cara knew her teacher liked a bit of calm after the rowdy twenty minutes they had to eat.  It was in this quiet time that Harold of the Watch knocked on the open doorjamb, holding John by the shoulder.

Cara saw Miss Helen's face before she knew who was at the door, and she watched surprise at a visitor turn to muffled shock and some other emotion she couldn't quite place.  As was the way of the class, they turned nearly as one to see who was there.  Their eyes rounded at the sight, and Martin, Bri, and quite a few of the others inhaled sharply.  John was a walking skeleton.

Continuation of Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Continuation and revision based on an idea of where it should actually go!

Pageant Question 10: If you could go back to a certain time in your life, what would it be and why?

 

When my beautiful baby boy turned three, I stopped going to play group, swim at the Y, and "Mommy-n-Me" yoga.  Cutting off his grandmother was harder, but not impossible.  I packed away most of the toys in our apartment and all of the diapers as well as the training toilet.  If anybody who cared to know me cared at all, they would have been seriously concerned.  It was far worse than they could have imagined.

Raising Calvin alone was not easy, and I abused myself every day with thoughts of how stupid I was when I had slept with his father.  I barely even remembered the man, and he was a man.  He wore a suit and everything.  I was old enough to know better, and this guy was so professional, so pulled-together, I thought he was okay.  He wasn't.  Luckily, he never tried to contact us.  He had to have found out I had a baby, but not so much as a peep.  I say I was lucky, though I really could have used the money from child support.  Calvin and I lived in an attic apartment in the city, and even though we didn't have a lot it was cramped.  I couldn't imagine how women and girls who weren't educated managed when I could barely make it through social services application processes.  I was persistent, though, which is why Calvin was enrolled in so many great programs.  Not anymore, though.

It was the morning of Calvin's third birthday, and spring finally seemed to be around for good.  I was up extra early to decorate and set out his presents (a real vintage Speak & Spell I found at a thrift store and fixed up, a stuffed dog that had to have been donated new, and some clothes--sorry, kid.)  In the morning, Calvin usually woke himself and called me from his bedroom, "Mommy!" he'd call in a sing-song voice.  "I'm a-way-ake!"  Bustling about, taping up streamers, I didn't notice he hadn't called yet, and it was after eight.  I wasn't a nervous mother, but of course I worried.  I pictured him, smothered in his pillow.  I pictured having a doctor explaining "sudden infant death" could happen to toddlers, too.  I pictured him kidnapped by his absent father, whom I might not even recognize if I saw him on the street.

Calvin, however, was awake.  I found him sitting up in his bed, staring at his hands.  He turned them over and looked at the backs, then again to the palms.  The look on his face frightened me because it was so intense.  "Calvin?" I asked from the door.  "You okay, buddy?"  My voice startled him, and my toddler looked up at me, stared for what seemed like a very long time, put his hands to his mouth and burst into tears.

I ran to his bed and held his shaking body.  What in the world had scared my baby so badly?  "It's okay, it's okay," I crooned over and over, rocking him.  Finally, Calvin was down to sniffles, and he said something he had never said before, "Mom?"

"Mom?" I repeated, sitting back to look at him.  I smiled, thinking that suddenly my baby at age three now thought himself old enough to graduate from "Mommy".  My smile faded when I saw his glistening blue eyes searching my face so intently.  "What is it, Calvin?  What's the matter, buddy?"

"Mom... I can't believe it's you.  I'm really here."

 

  He walked off in a straighter, more purposeful way than I'd ever seen, and came back with the box of tissues from the bathroom.  After that brought a new burst of tears, I finally pulled myself together.  "You okay, Mom?"  I nodded.  "What were we going to have for breakfast?  I'm starving!"

  I haven't had those since...  For a long time."  I noticed the pause, but ignored it to make my little boy's favorite breakfast.  I realized Calvin, at thirty-five, was older than me.

computer," and "Can we have sushi for dinner?"  Nonna's coffee mug would often mysteriously drain itself of liquid.

This is all physics.  My calculations for returning to my own body."  Calvin didn't hear my quiet objection that he was in his own body.  He slapped the table.  "I wish I could have brought my notes with me!  How stupid of me not to realize Bernmann wouldn't have written his papers yet.  Why was I so dumb?"  He looked up with the eyes of a nearly middle-aged man.  "I know you always told me that my father was brilliant, but there's got to be a run of stupid in my genes, too."  Calvin couldn't miss my look this time, and he tried to backpedal.  "No, Mom, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it the way it sounded."

and an individual could travel along his time stream."  He took my silence as additional proof I couldn't follow and waved one chubby toddler hand.  "It's not important, Mom.  What's important is that I get back to being me, and you will have your Calvin back.  I'll be able to see what happened in the future because of my changes here."

My baby slid out of his booster seat, never taking his eerily old eyes off of me, his sobbing shadow of a mother.  I thought he was going to give me the hug he always did when I was feeling blue, but this was not my little Calvin.  My Calvin sensed when I was sad and tired and threw his arms around my neck to cry with me.  This Calvin's eyes were cold, and they saw me start to bend when he came near.  He stopped, his mouth tight.  "Mother," he began, "pull yourself together."

"I can't, remember?"  I indicated my wasted chest, "I don't have all of me anymore."

His eyes narrowed, "This is what you're mad about?  That I saved your life?  You'd be dead by the time I'm ten if it weren't for me."

"At least I would have my Calvin."

He grabbed his hair and growled, "I am your Calvin!"

"No, you're not!  My Calvin wouldn't yell at his mother.  My Calvin would have hugged me when I'm sad.  My Calvin wouldn't call his mother 'smart enough'!"

"And my mother was an angel!" he screamed.

I shook my head, "Because she's dead, Calvin.  She's dead and you made her into an angel, but you disdain the real, live woman before you who is your mother."

"My mother would have given her life for me!"

My voice was quiet, but steady, "I did."  I knew he wouldn't understand the future I had before my unplanned pregnancy.  I knew he couldn't fathom that I had a life for myself that ended once he came along.  He thought I was stupid because I let his father get away.  He thought I was stupid because I didn't get my degree or have a prestigious job or a nice house.  He probably thought I had been stupid to ignore my own body and get cancer.  I realized now that Calvin, the thirty-five year old Calvin of the future, was using me just as much as his father had; he wanted to prove his theory, and saving my life was secondary.  He thought of me as much as his father had.

Calvin looked up at me, his small chest heaving, his little fists clenched.  I could practically read his mind: How dare you get in the way of my discovery?  I wondered if he could read mine: Where did I go wrong in raising you?

"I'm done."  Calvin's sudden dismissal of our argument was stunning.  He started gathering up his papers.  "I need a backpack."  I couldn't imagine at that moment why, but just then he was straining to reach the middle of the table, so, of course, I helped him stack the papers he couldn't get to.  He wouldn't look at me.  "A backpack.  Please.  Now."

I moved to get my old pack from the closet, even while wondering why.  My deluded mind forced his actions to fit what I thought was best; he was gathering his papers into the backpack for my safekeeping here, like I said.  But it wasn't true.  Calvin had gone into his room and was already zipping up his baseball-themed windbreaker.  I had always had to help him with zippers, but, of course, his fingers were as clever as his mind these days.

"What are you doing, Calvin?"  I shivered.

"Leaving."

I laughed, which made him turn his narrowed eyes in my direction.  I explained, "But, you can't leave.  You're only three!  Where can you go?"

"I'm going to the university and I will find Dr. Bernmann and I will explain what happened.  I don't think it matters now that it would be a paradox..." he froze in the act of zipping the backpack closed and a slow smile illuminated his face.  Calvin turned to me, "My, God!  It was me!  It was me the whole time!"

I didn't understand, but my baby was looking at me and smiling, so I knelt and smiled, too, "What was you, Calvin?"

"I'm the one who inspires Bernmann to write his paper.  I invented the entirety of time travel myself!  It was me!  Me!"  As Calvin laughed, I realized he wasn't looking at me at all, but rather at his genius.  He hefted the pack to his small shoulder; it was nearly as big as he was and I imagined seeing him as he would be on his first day of school in two years.  He turned to me, smiling with his angel's face at his own glory, "Goodbye, Mother.  I'll have Dr. Bernmann return my three-year-old self when I'm gone, and, I guess, I'll see you now and later."  Calvin went to the door put his hand on the knob above his head and said over his shoulder, "By the way, Mother, why don't you buy me some more advanced books?  If you work a little harder raising me, maybe I can reach my full potential despite your...circumstances."

I couldn't move.  It was like I was kicked in my ruined chest, and I could only watch my baby leave, walking down the stairs to our apartment one at a time.  I heard his little feet in their second-hand sneakers take each step, one foot then the other, one foot then the other, because his legs were so short.  I faintly heard the door to the outside open and slam shut, and I pictured Calvin shoving it with both hands, the triumphant smile still on his face as he planned out how to convince this Dr. Bernmann to listen to a toddler.

Despite his words, Calvin was my baby, and I ran to the window the overlooked the front sidewalk and threw it open to call to him, ask him to wait for me and I would do whatever he wanted.  Simultaneously, traitorously, I felt like as big a sucker as I did when I cried to his father's back when he walked away.

I saw Calvin on the sidewalk.  I saw a group of local college students breeze past him, ignoring the toddler on his own because what did they care?  They had tests to take.  Calvin walked to the curb between the parked cars.  I opened my mouth to shout before he got too far to hear me, but he had already stepped out into the street.  It was another college student, hurrying on his way to class, worried about finding a parking space, not thinking that a toddler would walk out into traffic in the middle of the block.

My baby is gone.  He came back to save me, and I lost him.  I'm in classes now, fulfilling one of the dreams I had before I made the foolish mistake of sleeping with a man I thought cared.  I'm majoring in physics, and I'm a Teaching Assistant for Dr. Bernmann.  He likes me a lot, and I've inspired him to so many breakthrough ideas.  What keeps me up at night now is wondering: how far back do I go?