Sparrows of the Deep

I.

     “Bring me the pickles.”

     “I won’t.”

     “Bring them to me now.”

     James Lee Milligan chews on the fatty sides of his mouth. Tastes like shortening.

     “Please don’t yell,” articulates the Chinese man, burrowing into the Frigidaire. Hazardous notions arise from iridescent lighting. Evil ideas planting down and pushing up. Pickles don’t push up, do they? Surely not. Pickles leisurely hang down from the trees grown by the gentleman farmer. The gentleman and the scholar. Pickles hang down from the extended sour soul.

     “Much obliged.”

     The Chinese man said he would not bring the pickles to James Lee Milligan, but James Lee Milligan began to yell and the Chinese man abhors yelling as much as some other things. The Chinese man does not like pickles. He does not consider pickles evil but he does not like them one bit. Not two bits, either.

     “Do you know what I detest?” James Lee Milligan’s round jowls roll around the pickle. He is lecturing while munching the pickle. Pickles retain a certain necessity for attention. They must first be appreciated, then they must be admired, and thirdly, although there is truly no third category, they must be relished without the rude interruption of human speech.

     James Lee Milligan fails to recognize the importance of the three categories. He does not appreciate, he does not admire, and he interrupts whenever he so wishes. James Lee Milligan’s chin is constantly jutted out into the unknown, a symbol of egotistical gain. Surely, society is a pearl from which small shards of deceptive fortune must be gained.

     James Lee Milligan sharpens his chisel.

     “I detest a dry pickle, for one, but another thing most detestable is the working man who does not work, the farmer who does not farm, the ode to the poor sailor or fisherman who drags a net behind his boat and does not master his craft! Me! I am a master of my craft! I say I am an artist so I will be one! I say and state and boldly declare my passion is the passion of a film maker, and nothing can pass by without being caught on blackened camera, without being made up and shutter speed….”

     The bloated man trails into infinity, disgusted by his relentless passions. Set back by the tireless crows. His is a mountain not to be moved no matter the faith. His is a hound wild never to be tamed.

     The Chinese fellow is the servant. Olive skin. Olive lips. An olive forehead so smooth that butterflies float out of it, translucent butterflies on tap. The Chinese man is smooth himself, really. He floats on the kitchen floor with slippered feet – hairy slippered feet sliding along, walking on water when no water is necessary and no walking is wrought. The Chinese man reaches for the pickle jar. His neat, pink padded, polished hands place the yellow jar on the side shelf.

     The Chinese man’s voice is feathers and an old miser abandoning his gold. He addresses his master. “You listen here JLM. You listen real good and get back down to your visitor. You said who you are and there’s no more talking about it now. You know I had a Maltese once and her snout was just fine, like yours. It jutted out just a little, to completion really, and when I saw her in the pet store I saw her snout first and the black part of it was delicate, really, and formed a perfect triangle on the end of it. Do you know why I bought her? The perfect triangle on the end. Simple beauties, JLM, tricks hiding behind curtains do the real entertaining, JLM.”

     JLM snorts. “You coulda left me the pickle juice. You coulda left it on the table for me to stare into and see my soul.”

     “You listen, I pulled the juice away because I know your devices, JLM. You’ve drank down that juice before and you had cramps in your flat nose for ages and I had to make you soup for it, eh? You get down those stairs to the radio and you deal with your guest! I’ll make a good wad of tea for the both of you, don’t you worry, and besides that you can sleep sweet and sound tonight because you’ve made an impact on the world and this time there shall be no chiseling of the pearl.”

     If you owned a house in the Estates of Weeping Meadows you would, perhaps, notice an olive skinned Chinese man shuffling out into the green yard and stretching slowly. If you continued to watch this olive skinned Chinese man you might wonder why he nibbles. He is constantly nibbling.

     I will shed some light in this matter. The Chinese man notices for the first that he does not know how a single, lonely blade of grass looks nor how it tastes. Grass may taste like pickles, after all, and how would one ever know? Thus he immediately goes about correcting such a sad state of affairs.

     In the kitchen JLM mutters, “How can there be a guest. We all thought Napier was dead. Napier is dead. There is no alternative. This is my story now. My story about the sparrows and the deep and all that nonsense. He wrote and I filmed it and now it’s mine, eh?”

     In the microwave door JLM sees a fuzzy reflection of his own face. His lips move while he mutters and he follows them with his eyes. “That’s one stoic man if you ever did see one,” He murmurs. In the microwave door JLM notices a funny reflection of his own face, but after he blinks there is only the outline of his head and his face is

     Blank.

II.

The Seminole Mountains protrude with the enterprise of an old woman’s bloated stomach. They sweep in a dangling arch, trailing serpentine tails into a dark navy horizon. They crest the peripherals of quite some eyes – all the eyes of the Seminole Valley and of the mud flats and of the Eastern corners of the range.

     A pity the poor squatters cannot travel more often. Few good citizens of the earth have journeyed over the Seminole Mountains, but I must say few deserve such an honor.

     Altogether, a general hatred for the Seminole Mountains has been acquired and dealt out like a deck of Aces. An ace for each soul to put up his sleeve for future use. Another Ace to hide in one’s underpants in case the bouncers bounce up your sleeve.

     Good citizens hate the Seminole Mountains because they can’t see past. Good citizens hate film producers just as much because film producers can see past the Seminoles. Who else has time to travel, floozy, dance in the rain and all that sort of rubbish? Well, writers for one. Photographers. Swing dancers. National Geographic folk. There are many souls held in detest by the general stupid populace, but JLM feels such a hatred specifically catered toward him, as many an unsuspecting, spice-hating attendee has felt specifically assaulted by some goodwill party thrown with a Mexican menu choking the fresh air and throbbing the mind.

     Floutas. That’s what JLM had for dinner. He consumed them in his beetle on the way home from work. Work is a code word. In all reality, JLM has no need to depart or return from work. JLM left to get donuts and had to drive back. Anyway, JLM keeps the floutas moist in a Ziploc in his car and hides them under the seat so hooligans cannot see the floutas. Hooligans would surely break into the car to grab his floutas for a snack. There is nothing so tempting to the general populace as a snack. In the high afternoon, I might even put a nylon over my face and raid the general populaces possessions if a snack jiggled, hanging in the balance at the end of the battle. Floutas. Soft tortillas. Filled with chicken and sauce and a little bit of cheese. No wonder they are almost as classic as pickles. The have the same ring in their title – “Floutas,” as “Dill’s.” AH! The beauty of it all is coming together in a glorious way, and JLM keeps the Floutas in his car to munch on particularly hungry days.

     On the edge of the Seminole Valley is a neighborhood titled, “Estates of the Weeping Meadows.”

The neighborhood neighboring the “Estates of the Weeping Meadows,” is “The Caves of the Weeping Meadows.” The neighborhood neighboring “The Caves of the Weeping Meadows,” is “The Caves of the Seminole Mountains,” and this neighborhood has the highest honor because it is literally the highest up of all the neighboring neighborhoods and thus must receive some sort of honorary crown.

     There is a house on the edge of the Seminole Valley. It does not matter what neighborhood this house resides in. Rather, this house is a neighborhood of its own because those nearest dare not reach out and those furthest do not care the slightest. This house is the warm hue of graham crackers and the texture of tungsten. A bubble of brooding surrounds the house but we understand completely that the words “bubble,” and “brooding,” do not complement each other one bit. Or two bits.

     Inside this house is a box of graham crackers and Jenga towers built on many surfaces. Anything that requires or even does a bit of wanting for a centerpiece is complemented by a Jenga tower. There is a Jenga tower on the dining room table and the kitchen table and the coffee table and the fireplace and the mantelpiece and the grand piano. There is a Jenga tower on the nightstand and on the back of the toilet and hanging from the chandelier.

     Three citizens of the Seminole Valley reside in this house. You briefly met the Chinese man. You are beginning to understand the film producer JLM. One more unfortunate soul is currently trapped in such a residence – a dreary, bubbled, brooding residence garnished with the sprinklings of Hell. I never did like sprinkles. They sure are pretty but pretty gets you nowhere after biting down and being entirely unimpressed by the taste, color, and chalk popping in your mouth with its sultry, flavorless kind.

     JLM says Jenga towers are inspiring. He walks downstairs just as the Chinese man demands, excitement gaining ground with a gnawing zeal. His secret has recently been revealed to the world, see, even the world beyond the Seminole Mountains. His secret is the trailer to his latest film called Sparrows of the Deep.         There is nothing like a long kept secret suddenly revealed.

     JLM enters his basement and proceeds to the coffee table. The coffee table squats in front of the television.

     The third man is reclined on the couch as if it is his couch. I assure you, the couch is not his couch. The third man is supposed to be dead. The general populace assumed he was dead, but the general populace must be wrong. He is not dead. He is Napier, the writer of Sparrows of the Deep. Napier is bald – the sort of bald head every child wishes to crush a graham cracker over. Slightly pointed in the middle and bowing down from there, the same lilting shape as a flouta, the similar mountainous peaks of sliced pickles. Dill’s pickles.

     JLM swallows his surprise. This face is familiar. The men already know each other. Their fates are entwined. Praying mantis with finger clasped. Banana boats when vanilla ice cream slithers from the surface of both bananas.

     Napier speaks slowly as if he has all the time in the world. Writers always think they do, you know. They awaken and build and destroy and invent. They assume they own the blistering world they live in. Well they’re wrong. None of us own this world. I’ll tell you straight out before any of the others will.

     “It’s an off brand. I can tell. I’ve been through all of them, looking, and rebuilt them back up – the real Jenga towers have a different sort of weight,” proclaims Napier.  

     “They are not off brand. I am sure. I know Jenga just as well as I know Dill’s and I can tell what’s an off brand and what’s not.” JLM is defensive.

     “You sure?”

     “I keep the certified notes.” JLM pulls Jenga authenticity certifications out of his back pockets. He has two certifications. One in his right back pocket and the other in his left back pocket.

     “You have Jenga authenticity certifications?” Napier’s tone is disdain.

     “Listen here son, I don’t know where you came from or where you’re headed, but you have no business in this house of mine.” JLM’s neck is a crepe. An airy crepe. Folded and crushed. “Shame on you,” JLM continues. “Enter a man’s house and lay on his couch and insult the brand of his Jengas. They are not off brand,” JLM declares offensively, “You are off brand!”

     Napier is content laying on the couch. His hands are folded over his stomach. Napier does not respond to insults. Napier does not negotiate with terrorists.

     Silence. It always breaks.

     “Tell you what. You should admire me, fool. You are quaking with fear now, that’s what. I wrote a prize winning novel, Sparrows of the Deep, and you decided to steal all the glory for yourself, eh? You betcha you better know what’s good for you and keep your insults to yourself. They’ll come back at you like boomerangs, you betcha. You should be bowing before me. I am the creator here. What kind of stunt you trying to pull here anyway? Betcha did not even know I was alive. Betcha thought I was just like all the other dead writers. Well I’ll tell you what sir, I don’t like your tweed and I am alive and kicking.” He continues yelling until all he can hear is his own voice bouncing straight off the ceiling. Then he shuts up. One of Napier’s eyes pops open, taking a long draw on the appearance of one JLM.

     Curiosity grasps Napier. “I wondered about you. Not what you looked like, really, because I found that online, but I wondered about how much guts you would have or what kind of food you ate or whether you had a sap of originality in you. I see you’ve got a sap. Otherwise you wouldn’t wear that hat. No one wears hats like that anymore. What do you like to eat?”

     JLM wiggles his ears. “Pickles. Sometimes.”

    “Wow.” Napier’s eyelids slide closed again but the eyebrows shoot up, as if he’s swallowed too much ale in one gulp. Gotta watch that ale, you know. It slides down all serpent like and warms up in your belly.     Deceitful, really, because then it turns to fire. “You do have guts. I wasn’t sure,” Napier murmurs. He is bald.

     “Listen here fellow. I am doing quite well. You should go back to being dead. Did you come here to drive a spear in my side or something?”

     “Yes.”

     “Why? I’ve made your Sparrows of the Deep twice as effective! You lard.”

     Curiosity has all but vanished. An oily layer of fury endures. “You ruined my work. You pasted the fibers of my words on digital files and spewed the goo of your secretion over the intercom of the world! My original masterpiece has been destroyed. Nothing remains but a dissected, aborted carcass.”

     “Fiend.” JLM cries out and weeps bitterly. “I have toiled over this dream because of your inspiration – you planted in me a vague trembling of success, so much that the world balanced, tenderly, on the tip of my little pinky.” JLM did not speak his entire vocabulary, at this point, for a thousand words tap danced lightly in the frontal lobe of his brain. Napier was the father of an idea, and JLM ran with it. For years, JLM imagined the persona of the late Napier, considering him in the brazen orange light of the dying sun. Napier must be a handsome father figure with a pickle in one hand and an ornate pen in the other. Napier must be like a true father to him. Instead, this lard. This fiend. Go back to the undertaker. Get out, slob.

     JLM stills his sobs. He speaks in a cool duress. “You crushed my dream.”

     “Really? Me? I’m good at that. It’s a skill. Thank you for the compliment.”

     JLM dashes upstairs and is back with frozen grapes.

     He pitches a frozen grape into Napier’s open eye. “Christ!” Napier hollers. “That kind of thing’s illegal. I’ll sick the good citizens on you, foul, you foul!”

     Napier leaps up the stairs, grapes pelting his back and the backs of his knees. The Chinese man shouts “sorry, sorry,” because hospitality should not be refused even the baldest of guests.

     Truth is, JLM should have been flattered to see Napier. It’s not often the author of Sparrows of the Deep pops into your humble dwelling.

III.

     The phone rings and the Chinese man screams. “Master Master Milligan,” he shouts, and tosses him the hot potato.

     “Hello,” JLM clears his throat.

     Silence.

     “I don’t want any funny business. You stop this funny business right now.”

     Silence.

     “Hanging—“

     “Ahhh wait! It’s not funny it’s just business.” Napier’s voice bursts through the line.

     “I have more frozen grapes….”JLM snorts.

     “Seriously. Listen. I have a grand idea. You were wondering where I’ve been, if not dead, right? I crossed over the Seminole Mountains and found a nice place there. Oh the real estate is fine. I have a dandy pool and a water hose that stretches to the moon and back,”

     JLM huffs.

    “Well here’s a grand thing,” Napier presses on like a weathered writer. You get to a certain point where everyone is huffing and there’s nothing to do but tuck all those huffs behind your ear like gum.

     “You live on your side of the mountain with your film, and I’ll live on mine. How does that sound?” Napier’s bold offer echoes from eardrum to eardrum over the sound waves.

     JLM does not like the lard. JLM does not like the lard at all. Napier seems the antithesis of a pickle.     Napier seems to be the cheapest unsalted butter in the land. But there is the issue of the copyright. The man is alive, thus issues must be solved like all other issues. JLM must dissolve the issue, gently, with enough acid to make a real dent.

     “Sure, sure old chap. That seems quite a reasonable assessment, and the end is happy for us both.”

Napier nods on the other end, grinning weakly. Sparrows of the Deep is saved. At least on one side of the Seminole Mountains.

     “Shall we meet and discuss the matter like real gentlemen, eh?” JLM inquires, “Rather than insulting and pitching grapes?” He chuckles. “We must exchange patents, after all, to ensure the authenticity of our deal. How bout my place tomorrow in the afternoon? Any time is good.”

     “Yessss oh yes.” Declares Napier with an astounding accent on the word oh.

     And so it is and so it shall be.

IV.

     There’s a thing about the world that is resolved in a transparent system of tubing. You see, everything is made of tubes and whether they are translucent tubes or intestinal tubes or tubes like straws that aid in the consumption of food, people are often tubes just the same.

     Tubes of the motives and beliefs that consume them internally. Conduits of the external, objective forces they have become slaves of. A slave of righteousness, a slave of evil, we all are slaves the same and all evil from the start.

     Take JLM for instance, armed with frozen grapes. There are whole trays of them, stacked up in the freezer like ice cubes. You see JLM is going to offer Napier a pickle but this pickle will be a poisonous pickle, and if Napier refuses the pickle JLM will just blow his head off with his Colt.

     Simple.

     Napier is a disappointment. Disappointments don’t just die, you have to kill them yourself and pelt them with grapes. That’s what frozen grapes are for. Pitching at Napier’s dead lard body.

     “Please come in,” JLM’s red door is about as welcoming as the fiery gates of Hell, so JLM has to be a bit more welcoming in person.

     “Would you like a pickle?” JLM ushers in Napier and sits him down at the coffee table. The fireplace has never felt warm flame. The mantle is cluttered with awards and ribbons, documents and claims.

     Napier laughs. “How different from our first encounter, eh?”

     The clock coos.

     “Have a pickle! China man, where are you?” JLM calls.

     China man hobbles over and hands one pickle to Napier and the other pickle to JLM. The Chinese man grins at JLM and winks. JLM nearly dies of hilarity rising up inside. Pushing up, like evil. Like sunflower seeds.

     “Well, I don’t often eat these, but today is special so might as well give it a munch,” remarks Napier, “after all, they are Dill’s.”

     “Pickles are meaty like beefsteak and salty like potato chips. There’s nothing better in the whole wide world,” and JLM’s words are full of relief. He didn’t want to use the Colt anyway. Save that for another day. That would make a mess.

     So the two men – risk takers with the same dream – talk the world over. Their land and the land, their world and the world, their blimey star field – the pain of a mountain run, the stretching grueling landscape, the portrait perspectives.

     Every man considers himself educated, strong, creative.

     That is, until he meets another man.

     That is, until he meets God.

     So the writer, Napier, exits the premises after an intriguing discussion about the nature of man, the signing of some documents, and the promise of renewal in his soul.

     JLM slumps upon his couch lamenting the slow working process of his pickle poison. The frozen grapes lay in the freezer unused and full of solid regret. Surely, JLM considers with passion, Napier must be dead on some sidewalk now, having fallen in a fainting spell and cracked his head. It will appear some silly mistake when it is public. The general public on this side of the Seminoles is dead to Napier anyway. Silly goat. Silly goose.

     At the end of the day it is JLM who dies. He dies with his mouth wide open, drooling.

     The Chinese man does a jig in the kitchen and calls Napier right up.

     “Sir? Sir? You come back here right now and collect your documents and things. I’ll explain when you arrive.”

     The Chinese man has always liked Sparrows of the Deep better as a novel than as a film. But most importantly, the Chinese man is repulsed by the scent of Dill’s pickles.