Books

Gordian Knot

The roads were somewhat empty. It had rained the night before, and the water had collected in the ditches and the shells from the rain. The hood from his sweatshirt was pulled up over his dark curls. The cloth was flapping against his cheeks, and shielding his brilliant eyes. Alexander’s legs were driving fiercely downward on the pedals of the Judge’s bicycle, and the children were playing football in the park as he changed into the strongest, briskest gear. The spokes were whizzing and the smell of honeysuckle melted in the air against and with the sounds of croaking frogs and crickets calling on till death, and on.

The sawed off bushes capped with heathered crowns of bougainvillaea crept up swiftly at his eyes and ears. The almost twilight was descending, as he coasted to the Judge’s gate and without sound unlatched the iron folds. He peeled the gate back on its hinges, and crept up with the bike inside the autumn grove to the right of the home. Alexander crouched down, camouflaged, and stared off to the house.

A mockingbird was singing on the edges of the wood, and the sounds of distant crickets calling idled in the mandarin air. The smell of bark and sap was at his nostrils, and he pinched them so he wouldn’t sneeze.

Alexander’s eyes began to water as he stood there pinching, and the Judge went streaking down the pathway from the home. The Judge was wearing white sweatpants. And he also wore a red shirt and a black bandanna on his arm. His silver waves of hair were briefly as a tinsel minnow in the sun. On his feet the Judge was wearing the same green yellow jogging shoes, which disappeared among the weeds and shrub.

Alexander walked the bike up to the Judge’s dark garage. Inside, beside the rusty mower and the tank of gasoline, were two blue Fuji ten speed bikes one woman’s and one man’s. Alexander quickly moved to the other side of the garage where tools were spread out on a wooden table: hammers, wrenches, pliers, screws, and saws. Alexander, still in surgeon’s gloves, picked up the pliers and a screwdriver, and returned to the bikes where they stood. Beneath the spokes, the gray sunlight was creeping from the dust webbed window to the floor. He quickly removed the tires from the woman’s bike and placed them on the table. Then he forced the tires, flat, from his own bike and fastened them to hers. He went to the table and emptied the hissing air from all the tires. He drove the screwdriver between the rubber and wheel, removing the hard semi tube. Then he took his shirt off and crafted the fresh rubber he had carried with him onto the tire with his hands. He did the same again, and slung the two still black snakes down across his shoulders, taking the air pump from the wall and filling the tires till hard.

When Alexander left the Judge’s garage, he was carrying on his shoulders two dead tires. The fresh ones he had brought were sitting, on two wheels, upon the wooden table, the punctured tires still and flat beneath the woman’s frame. Alexander carried the rake in his hand.

He made his way through the woods beside the out path, propping and arranging some broken limbs and fallen leaves. The valley to the left revealed the deep expanse of all the city with her lights like fireflies that swimming hovered on the dumb terrene. The valley to the right was blooming marshes rich with absinthe trees.

Alexander reached a quiet brush beside the path. From a higher point a clearing formed, and he could see the breeze where it was playing on the jogging path side leaves. Alexander crept into the cradle of the bush, and took the cold and heavy cartridge from his sock. He loaded the gun. And waited.

Somewhere, the labors of an industrious woodpecker proved neither foreign nor near. Alexander again covered his nostrils. With his pinky he then wiped his eye. The pecking ceased, and the sun was sinking lazily downward, so that all was August and gilded in the trees. Alexander held the gun in his palms. He inspected the cold machine there, as it formed a large L in his hands. The buzzsaw woodpecking resumed, and Alexander was standing and leaning to a thin branch that was blocking his view. He tugged at the bough, which was sturdy, and twisted the limb at its roots until it fell. He then took some mud in his hand and dirtied the cut where the bough had been broken, and he placed the dead branch by the rake at his thigh. And he waited.

The woodpecker’s tapping continued. It sounded like a jigsaw, or an old typewriter tapping. The orange and the brass were slowly retreating, and the pecking was joined by a whisper of treeleaves that danced in the breeze, the crickets in a faroff chorus soaring, and the sound of Alexander’s own breath when it came. And he waited.

The sound of his feet striking earth was escorting the Judge as his shape first appeared. His wet hair formed a thin serrate of harmless daggers. His aged yet fitted waist was bounding forward as he grew. The Judge lifted his hand to brush the sweat from his eyelids, and returned them to his side. And Alexander watched his figure grow.