The Naked Bull

Vashon remembered most the annoying waves, those tedious crashing hecklers, and how he grew to hate them that day.

The wind-tossed sand pecked and pestered his eyes as he worked his shirt up over his face; it smelt as a rancid bar towel. He tried again to swallow, his mouth a mason jar of cobwebs, his tongue a rockery slug. Drowning in saltwater sounded cool and good just then as he half sat up, guessing how far he might get before losing his nerve with not a drop to drink it back again.

Raising an edgy palm to his cheek, imagining it his brother or his father, eager to assist. Vashon felt what they would feel: a cactus, a reptile, a leper.

He pushed the hand away.

The birds came then, inconsiderate rats on wing that he had seen all the while but not heard, the constant wale of the wind muted all but his own muttering. They were on him at once, the Christ posed seagulls, the Rorschach crows. The frenzied tribe passed overhead, avoiding the Tabasco eyed scarecrow below.

He rolled to one side in order to follow their erratic movement out to sea and back, one fool followed the other, to chance upon whitewashed fishing boats hauled ashore and forgotten long ago, their nets hung dry and blown. There the raucous mimics shuffled and chose between themselves for a place to perch when the rare sun fingered its way through the ominous gloom only to be obscured yet again allowing Vashon yet another attempt at escaping once more into his hiding place of unconsciousness. He would not be so lucky this time for, with eyes pressed shut, he was once again walking through the markets of Pamplona where he had first encountered the witch.

Strange, for he was not seeking one.

He had ventured inside her lair willingly and there he laid with a creature with eyes as black as her soul and for that he should pay with his. But the girl…the girl! She was innocent! Leave her!

As was his brother…no? Had he not become the bringer of death, the destroyer of light?

Just then, as if by design, the landscape went grey as a cloud passed between where he lay writhing as he was taken in a reverie he cared not to visit.

No father should ever bury their child; no brother should ever suffer such with his younger. For had Vashon, oh yes, the great Vashon! not indeed set in motion the chaotic path that he had traversed so sure and true? A path with heart if nothing else, for surely all paths lead nowhere and one is as good as the next, yes?

Vashon passed his brother the bottle and he drank. No more than forbidden fruit from the garden and yet, unbeknownst to he (or at least he had claimed) the worm was there all along and once ingested proved most pernicious.

But he did blame himself.

Did he not apologize to each as he held the ash box? Did he not lie to his mother on her deathbed and claim he was not afraid as she lay dying? Are these lies not justified in some way, however after the fact? And did he not tell his dead brother, as he held his arm and the life ran out of him, that he was indeed sorry that he had introduced him to that tree and that fermented fruit and a life with the worm that eats out your guts and turns you to clay as yet you still breathe?

Enough!

Something then, a rustling in the fabric, a Seagull it was that brought him around as it broke from the others and alit in a flutter quite near to his animated carcass. Opening a crusty eye, Vashon examined it as he slowly arose, feeling his head swim to the dizzying height. Its wings were pewter, its breast milk fleece. The scavenger clicked his yellow beak, like a shaman tapping dry bones at a demon, and there stood none other.

He meant no joke as he kicked a trench of sand toward the clown, yet it was high slapstick when the wind threw it back in his face. The feint, however, did have the desired effect, and the coward leaped into the air, protesting loudly as it waggled its ungainly wings. He spat sand at the bastard as he shook and swatted at his head.

As fate chided him, the bird rose with indignation and shat a gut load of greyish-green bilge from its rectum in the general direction of his face and chest, which coated him with a gelatinous splat!

What vision of hell was this? Vashon regressed to his knees at once to babble obscenities, pitifully clawing at himself, throwing fists full of sand in the air that stuck to the putrid filth that he grated hard against his skin until it was bloody and raw with the stringy bile.

He then felt the first tug at his innards, the telltale sign of a heave that would no doubt scoop his empty gut dry. There, behind pressed eyes, again his mermaid and the hidden bottles and bloodshot mornings not unlike this one, her eyes turned the texture of a fish with the same blank profile stare that always asked, “what this?” And his answer still, more truth than poetry, “Follow my bubbles to the surface.”

Once again, he was brought back by an annoying howl from somewhere toward the landing. Vashon could easily have ignored it and gone on with his self-flagellation but noticed the strange absence of the ravenous mob and not a petty quill to be seen. Yet the mournful cries continued. He became supremely perturbed at the intrusion and decided to track down the inconsiderate wretch and silence it, whoever or whatever it might be, and in a most painful fashion.

Vashon followed the sound to the dry dock that smelt of old shit and urine. There were a few trees and dead charcoal pits, though he saw no human and wondered with a grimace what a chance encounter with this walking cadaver might produce. Closer, then, he noticed the shrieking coincided with a strange rustling. His tortured mind began to associate images with the sounds. A hideously deformed child left abandoned? A rabid dog held tethered by the throat and forgotten?

Rounding a pair of old skiffs listing on their keels, he witnessed there a balm to his hell burnt face. A large seagull, by all indications the same shit slinger he was wearing, was gloriously entangled in one of the many swaying nets. He felt revenge close at hand, imagining how he would twist its neck slow and feel the bones bend taut before snapping loud as they splintered, then to toss the mangled kite into the sea for its last flight in this world.

Vashon approached the beast, savoring every step as he watched the condemned rattle its cage. Coming within arm’s reach he stopped and waited as it twisted and convulsed, the loud screeching now reduced to small clucks from deep within.

The scene turned grey one last time as another cloud passed between the sun and where he stood with the tufted wretch. Not unlike the boundary between his life and hers, where he was, and where his mermaid might be. He wondered how his life in Mukilteo might come to an end.

For his life, Vashon could not say what had come over him. As he watched the sad creature struggle, all he saw was himself, twisting and turning, dangling from his sins, real or perceived. He tried to raise or even remember the hate he had had only moments before. But it was gone, vanished, disappeared into the air like the embers from a fire late at night. When the words and the whiskey are gone and all that is left is to hold on to the day until the last possible moment, for once we have said goodnight, it is gone forever and one less from the count.

Vashon approached the gull and reached out to it. It snapped at his filthy hands, drawing blood. He felt pain, and it was good. The procedure took some time; the fine mesh wound tightly around it many times. But after some thoughtful work and many calm words, he had the creature in both hands, free of its bindings.

It had stopped biting Vashon as he paused, waiting for…gratitude? Perhaps for a moment. Then he realized he was doing nothing for the bird. It was acting from instinct and could not care less for itself, or him for that matter.

As for Vashon, in that moment, he did care. He held the seagull up on high and said as he released it

“Take it all with you, I am done with it.”

And the huge bird gracefully flew away in the direction of the wind and never looked back.

Not once.

And Vashon?

He turned back toward Mukilteo.

And his mermaid.