THANKSGIVING is this Thursday. In honor of the holiday dedicated to gratitude, I decided I would share the following short story, which I composed some time ago. This is the first work of fiction in short story form I will have posted on this blog. It is dear to me. Any comments are welcome!
The story will be broken up into separate acts, so the posts themselves aren't so long.
I now present to you:
THE BAMBOO MAN
a short story by Moses Norton
EVERYONE knew him as the Bamboo Man. This is how he Peco, his
canary, knew him. And since the Bamboo Man lived alone, Peco was everyone. This
means, of course, that the Bamboo Man was his name for himself. What better
name could there be?
This is the kind of man he was. He had his
own clever way of going about things, if the way he did them made him laugh.
His cheeks were red, not just with long years under the sun, but with his
laughter. Dark and deep were the wrinkles of his face, etched by a bright grin.
To keep his grin
strong in his old age, the Bamboo Man exercised it. Sometimes he exercised with
great effort. He turned his face this way and that in front of the mirror,
looking for any fade in his grin.
Then he would
say, “Stay healthy, grin. Stay bright. Do you not know that I need you when the
Clouds come?”
But this Bamboo
Man, besides his strange ways and his pet Peco—though he would never tell her this—he was truly lonely. The wife
of his youth had passed with his youth and he had only one photograph of her
face and a foggy memory of her life. He had no children, at least none he could
remember.
The Bamboo Man lived in a little wooden hut
atop the Mountain. The wooden walls knew only his voice and no other, for Peco
too had aged tremendously and did not sing. Her yellow colors had changed to
white and she often hung her heavy head. The Bamboo Man often had silence as
his dinner guest—who made for a poor conversationalist, he would say.
So too, the Mountain valleys and forests
and summit knew only the voice of the Bamboo Man and no other. The animals in
it did not sing, neither did they talk to themselves nor to their grins the way
the Bamboo Man did. Only the voice of the wind on the rocks and in the branches
could be heard, and that is no true voice, but an unfeeling and lonesome sound.
So, with no one to talk to about the pains,
the pleasures and the passing giggles of life, the Bamboo Man had for years
occupied himself with work, much as a man waits for something unknown. To keep
himself busy, he tended the bamboo groves that grew upon the Mountain. If
you’ll put two and two together, you’ll realize that this is how he got his
name.
From the bamboo, he fashioned whatever his
cleverness wanted: an elegant cage for Peco, in which she gratefully stood. He
fashioned a walking stick… well, several of them since they often snapped in
half. He fashioned an umbrella, a fence for his garden, a hat, a frame for his
bed, a clock and a fan and so on. Not only did the Bamboo Man benefit from all
these things he made, but the good work itself kept his hands strong even as
his inventing kept both his mind and humor intact.
I say his humor, because on occasion he
crafted things out of bamboo which had seemed like good ideas at first, like a
blanket to keep him warm or a frying pan to fry his eggs—only the blanket did little
to keep him warm and the pan fried itself before it cooked the eggs. But if
such things happened, as often they did, the Bamboo Man would only laugh. After
all, nobody saw his embarrassing failures at invention except for Peco and she
could never tell on him.
Each day, he left his little wooden hut at
dawn and walked deep into the Mountain forest in search of the finest bamboo.
Each day the creatures of the forest passed him by. They would not speak to
him, as I already explained, but he took the time to greet each one.
“Good morning, Mountain. Good morning,
forest. Good morning, flying squirrel. Good morning, stag. Good morning, fox.
Good morning, viper,” he said as he walked.
And each day he came to the waterfall and
filled up his jug with clear water. Each day when he finished his morning
drink, he looked past the green leaves of the trees and the gray rocks, past
the white waterfall into the deep darkness of the cave that gaped behind it.
Into this cave, the Bamboo Man had never been.
Sometimes on those shining mornings when he
took his drink of clear water and afterward peered into the darkness of the
under-earth, he might tell himself: “You know you really did go into that cave,
old man. You really did. But it was so long ago that you have forgotten.
Remember? You left your best chisel in there and never got it back.”
But this is how the Bamboo Man talked with
himself. He knew he had never set foot in the cave and that his best chisel
hung safely at home on a nail on the wall. No, if he was honest with himself—which
in the mind every creature must be—he knew he feared the cave. From it the
Clouds came.
The Bamboo Man was not irrational, nor
timid, nor easily spooked. Why, he once guarded his garden of radishes from a
whole army of wild raccoons, all alone in the night with nothing but a bamboo
pole against a whole horde of masked thieves. Any lesser man would have fled in
terror, he assured himself. No, the Bamboo Man was no coward.
Yet the Bamboo Man always turned his back
on the cave and went about his work. When the sun began to set and the Mountain
blushed red with evening, he knew the time had come to return home. The Clouds
had already begun to crawl out of the cave behind the waterfall. Soon they
would cover the Mountain, thick and heavy like too many winter quilts.
Now the Bamboo Man knew the Mountain well
enough from years of walking across it. He could not get lost, not even in the
night, but he did not walk when the Clouds came out. The dark and the chill
reminded him of things that did not want remembering.
“Good night, viper. Good night, fox. Good
night, stag. Good night, flying squirrel. Good night, forest,” he bade them as
he hobbled upon his bamboo cane back to his little hut, adding: “Good night,
Mountain,” as he closed the door. He did not say ‘good night’ to the Clouds. He
didn’t care to.
After he had come inside at night, he would
take the pouch from his shoulder and drop its contests on the floor: a
collection of the finest bamboo he had found that day. The Bamboo Man would
then sit on the floor, cross-legged, with his thumb and pointer-finger slapping
the sides of his chin, as he gazed around his little hut. His old eyes passed
over all the things he had made: frames and baskets and lampshades, pots,
vases, shutters, furniture of all sorts, tools of every kind and so on. What
could he possibly make that he did not already have?
Aha!
All in a moment he leapt to his feet with a
speed unknown to his age. His limbs complained at that sudden movement but he
hushed them good. That night, inspiration knocked at the door of his brain. He
hurried to gather together the very best shoots of bamboo. He raised his tools
and began. He worked long into the night.
Peco made a grumbling noise.
“I’ve slept many years away, Peco,” he said,
without looking up, “I have slept enough.”
Some hours later, the Bamboo Man sat upon
his chair and gave a big sigh of satisfaction. He struck his hands together
with a loud clap. Peco rustled in her cage. The tired old bird’s eyes saw the
Bamboo Man’s newest piece of work. And what a piece it was.
There, in the middle of the hut, stood an
awkward and misshapen object. The old eyes of Peco did not recognize it. She
ruffled her white feathers and went back to sleep. But the eyes of her master
were sharper. He had made just the thing he did not have. He had made a son.
The bundle of bamboo he had bent and strapped and pieced together was a less than
perfect mannequin of sorts. It had a large almost-round head, two arms of
unequal length which went out sideways and sturdy feet which miraculously kept
it upright.
The Bamboo Man smiled at it. Then he
frowned at it. He grimaced at it, too. He slapped his thumb and pointer-finger
on his chin. Then he jumped up and said “Aha!” again. He took off his hat and
put it on the bamboo boy’s head. He then resumed his seat.
He smiled at the little bamboo boy all
night long, till morning crept in through the window like a nosy neighbor. Peco
opened her eyes to see her master working once again. The Bamboo Man had stowed
the bamboo boy in a corner. He had turned to another project.
In a few moments, he stood up. Peco made a
curios noise and he came and opened the cage for her. She slowly floated out,
perched on the edge of the Bamboo Man’s newest invention. The invention was
something like a pillow and something like a basket with legs. Peco cocked her
head from side to side and drifted to the pillow. It felt soft. But she soon
grew bored and flew back to her cage.
Now the Bamboo Man realized what it was he
had made, though he had built it without fully knowing. And no wonder he did
not recognize it: a baby’s crib. He had not seen one since the ancient days of
his youth.
“But why a baby’s crib, my Peco?” he asked
his canary, “Are you pregnant?”
Peco ruffled her
wings with indignation and turned her back to him. The Bamboo Man shrugged.
Like he had for the bamboo boy and all the other things he’d made, he laughed. After
a brief rest and his usual breakfast of sprouts and eggs, the Bamboo Man went
out to the forest.
“Good morning,
Mountain. Good morning, forest and flying squirrel. Good morning, stag and fox
and viper.”
And then he was at
the pool, the waterfall concealing the dark cave. He stooped to fill his jug
with a drink, as he did every morning, but when he put it to his lips he heard
a sound that made him drop the jug. It shattered to pieces on the stones at his
feet.
He heard the sound of a baby crying.
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...act II
~norton
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