Nature Morte »
#
Bennett had drifted to southern China, a small village near the city of Guangzhou, where he found himself sitting in a rice field under a teeming rain. But he wasn’t Nat Bennett anymore, at least not externally. He was a young Chinese boy, but in his head he was still Bennett, the man who somehow got transported here, into this body, by forces he could not understand. Still Bennett’s memories were clear: Sacramento, the classes he was teaching, the woman who said she loved him and could empirically prove it in multiple bedroom experiments
to his scientific delight.
What have I done to be punished so mercilessly? A tossed rag doll, an abra-cadabra victim of a literal vanishing act made uglier by the reappearing act that followed.
“The rain is a friend,” said the old man working the ground behind him.
Bennett, who didn’t look like Bennett anymore, nodded. In English he thought the words to say, then the words translated themselves into the Cantonese of the old man who, he soon discovered, was the grandfather of the boy he had become.
At first dusk, they walked home and into their thatched hut where the unrelenting rain continued to fall. He welcomed sleep despite the discomfort of the small lumpy cot mattress stuffed with branches and leaves. He lay there open-mouthed, begging the voices to speak their dark art again, so he could drift home. Yet, each morning he would wake at dawn, and with Grandfather, trudge through the muddy roads to Master-san’s rice fields where they would labor till early moonlight.
Three years. He hardly gave much thought anymore to his old Sacramento life. By now, his students had a new science teacher. Maybe they liked him more than they did old strict Mr. Bennett who assigned too much homework and called in parents when misbehavior and/or laziness drove grades down. No, he was
gone and forgotten. Maybe once in awhile Rossi told the tale of the man who vanished into thin air. The man who argued in defense of a science that ultimately failed him.
The young Suh-yee’s simple life of poverty suited him. He loved Grandfather and he knew, if anyone in his life –– both his lives! –– ever truly loved him, it was this old man.
But then one noon day, as the two of them sat under a plantain tree eating a meager lunch, he heard the rumbling in his head. Once more now he clenched what few teeth he had, tightened his throat like a vise so the black magic could not spew out and take him away
again. He tried, but he was no more successful than he had been in that teacher’s lounge. And he was certainly no match for the diabolical voices demanding to be heard. When he cried out to Grandfather, the magic burning in his mouth escaped. He remembered
thinking, Maybe I’m going home. California, here I come. Hello there, Mr. Bennett.
Suh-yee looked down and saw he was becoming only half the boy he was. His bare legs were barely visible. He could feel the rest of his body like dust powdering into the air.
Grandfather stood, took feeble backward steps, and released a weak lion cub of a roar. He waved his bony arms like a madman battling evil spirits.
Suh-yee floated above the pampas grass, the fading sensation streaming down one arm, then the other till Grandfather’s eyes grew large as tea saucers. The old man could see only Suh-yee’s head, then only his lips. His eyes. Finally, nothing.
#
He stood staring up at the two moons in the red iron-oxide sky. Phobos and Deimos. Panic and Terror. He had a student once ask, “Why two moons, not one like here on Earth?” and he had answered,
“Why one?” Now he stood on Mars. He knew that with
certainty. Out there in space, Earth was the far-away planet. He had drifted galactically this time and he wondered what the next surprise would be.
Get used to it, he told himself. This is the new you. At least for a while. He saw his three elongated, green, webbed hands. They were smooth as whitefish bellies. His two legs. His feet. Suh-yee, once Bennett, now who-knew-who, touched his reptilian face with trembling hands.
Then a voice called out. Not the ones inside his mind. They were silent now. Someone in the red night-glow waved at him from the stone dwelling across the field.
“Pwoffk, are you going to stay out there all night? You know I can’t fall asleep without you beside me.”
How long will this life last? he wondered. Where to next?
Why? When will the voices finally let me ride the wind and be done with it?
Then the other voice called to him, “Those moons will still be there tomorrow. Now come to bed!”
Pwoffk glided effortlessly home.
Drifter
by Salvatore Buttaci
His voices knew the magic words. They spoke them without provocation, unsealing Bennett’s lips so the incantation could fly audibly from them. Once it did, Bennett would begin to vanish, then reappear somewhere else. A reluctant drifter leaving one life for another. It was contrary to all he believed in. Science
had been for him the last word concerning what was and what could not possibly be. How often had he drummed that into the heads of his high school science students? “If it cannot be empirically proven, what do we have, class? That’s correct. Nothing but hypothesis, pure conjecture. If you can’t take it to the lab and study it, you’re holding in your hand lots of nada, zip, nothing at all!”
The first time Bennett drifted away, he was in the faculty room finishing a hasty lunch before fifth period. The only other teacher there sat across the table from him, his colleague Dave Rossi, English teacher and poet, with whom he enjoyed arguing about the existence
of God and an afterlife, scoffing at such “infantile preoccupations,” while at the same time defending the superiority of science.
Suddenly, in mid-sentence, Bennett constricted his throat, locked shut his jaw, all the while screwing up his face in reaction to the burning sensation inside his mouth.
“What’s wrong, Nat? You don’t look right.”
Rossi stood up, walked around Bennett’s chair so that he stood behind him. “Are you choking?” he asked, but Bennett wouldn’t speak. He shook his head. Then it was Rossi yelling, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!” because Nat Bennett was disappearing limb by limb, his head and torso floating above his seat, his mouth gaping in a soundless scream.
Rossi’s screams brought the principal, a few of the faculty and even several students barging into the faculty, but by the time they got there, Bennett had completely vanished. Rossi stood there babbling and pointing at the place where moments ago Bennett sat telling him there was neither Heaven nor Hell. Now it seemed to Rossi that Bennett, in one place or the other, was recanting.
Mrs. Carlin, the Sacramento High School principal, draped her arm around Rossi’s shoulder, trying to console him. In her decades of academic life she had seen two other teachers break down like this. Pressures build up and need to find release. She liked Rossi. She had always considered him level-headed, life-loving, in control, but now she had her doubts.
“What happened here?” she asked.
“He was sitting right there. We were talking. Then all at once his face turned blood-red.
His eyes started to tear. I figured, he’s choking, having a heart attack maybe, but when I got up to offer help, I saw his arm disappear!”
The principal, the other teachers, and the students glanced at one another, eyebrows raised.
“I blinked. Okay, it’s a blind spot. This can’t be happening, but by then, Bennett’s head and torso –– no arms or legs! –– were floating in air. I screamed. What else could I do? Either Bennett was disappearing or I was losing my mind. The last to vanish were his eyes.”
Now the principal was directing the boys to Room 112. “Find Mr. Bennett, boys.”
“You won’t find him there,” said Rossi. “Not there or anywhere. He’s gone.”
Bennett had drifted to southern China, a small village near the city of Guangzhou, where he found himself sitting in a rice field under a teeming rain. But he wasn’t Nat Bennett anymore, at least not externally. He was a young Chinese boy, but in his head he was still Bennett, the man who somehow got transported here, into this body, by forces he could not understand. Still Bennett’s memories were clear: Sacramento, the classes he was teaching, the woman who said she loved him and could empirically prove it in multiple bedroom experiments
to his scientific delight.
What have I done to be punished so mercilessly? A tossed rag doll, an abra-cadabra victim of a literal vanishing act made uglier by the reappearing act that followed.
“The rain is a friend,” said the old man working the ground behind him.
Bennett, who didn’t look like Bennett anymore, nodded. In English he thought the words to say, then the words translated themselves into the Cantonese of the old man who, he soon discovered, was the grandfather of the boy he had become.
At first dusk, they walked home and into their thatched hut where the unrelenting rain continued to fall. He welcomed sleep despite the discomfort of the small lumpy cot mattress stuffed with branches and leaves. He lay there open-mouthed, begging the voices to speak their dark art again, so he could drift home. Yet, each morning he would wake at dawn, and with Grandfather, trudge through the muddy roads to Master-san’s rice fields where they would labor till early moonlight.
Three years. He hardly gave much thought anymore to his old Sacramento life. By now, his students had a new science teacher. Maybe they liked him more than they did old strict Mr. Bennett who assigned too much homework and called in parents when misbehavior and/or laziness drove grades down. No, he was
gone and forgotten. Maybe once in awhile Rossi told the tale of the man who vanished into thin air. The man who argued in defense of a science that ultimately failed him.
The young Suh-yee’s simple life of poverty suited him. He loved Grandfather and he knew, if anyone in his life –– both his lives! –– ever truly loved him, it was this old man.
But then one noon day, as the two of them sat under a plantain tree eating a meager lunch, he heard the rumbling in his head. Once more now he clenched what few teeth he had, tightened his throat like a vise so the black magic could not spew out and take him away
again. He tried, but he was no more successful than he had been in that teacher’s lounge. And he was certainly no match for the diabolical voices demanding to be heard. When he cried out to Grandfather, the magic burning in his mouth escaped. He remembered
thinking, Maybe I’m going home. California, here I come. Hello there, Mr. Bennett.
Suh-yee looked down and saw he was becoming only half the boy he was. His bare legs were barely visible. He could feel the rest of his body like dust powdering into the air.
Grandfather stood, took feeble backward steps, and released a weak lion cub of a roar. He waved his bony arms like a madman battling evil spirits.
Suh-yee floated above the pampas grass, the fading sensation streaming down one arm, then the other till Grandfather’s eyes grew large as tea saucers. The old man could see only Suh-yee’s head, then only his lips. His eyes. Finally, nothing.
He stood staring up at the two moons in the red iron-oxide sky. Phobos and Deimos. Panic and Terror. He had a student once ask, “Why two moons, not one like here on Earth?” and he had answered,
“Why one?” Now he stood on Mars. He knew that with
certainty. Out there in space, Earth was the far-away planet. He had drifted galactically this time and he wondered what the next surprise would be.
Get used to it, he told himself. This is the new you. At least for a while. He saw his three elongated, green, webbed hands. They were smooth as whitefish bellies. His two legs. His feet. Suh-yee, once Bennett, now who-knew-who, touched his reptilian face with trembling hands.
Then a voice called out. Not the ones inside his mind. They were silent now. Someone in the red night-glow waved at him from the stone dwelling across the field.
“Pwoffk, are you going to stay out there all night? You know I can’t fall asleep without you beside me.”
How long will this life last? he wondered. Where to next?
Why? When will the voices finally let me ride the wind and be done with it?
Then the other voice called to him, “Those moons will still be there tomorrow. Now come to bed!”
Pwoffk glided effortlessly home.
SALVATORE BUTTACI is an obsessive-compulsive writer whose work has appeared widely here and abroad. He was the 2007 recipient of the $500 Cyber-wit Poetry Award.
