(argued by some to be one of the greatest works of literature ever written—a bold claim for a poem only 14 lines long), which shows that even great political power will one day fall and be lost to time. <\/span><\/p>\nThis is the protagonist\u2019s great fear, but it has only hit him now, when his love has left him. This is a common fear of all humans, and likely a common time to feel it hit home. Why else do authors write, do leaders conquer, and do matriarchs continue the family line? We all want to leave our mark. We all want to be remembered. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut as true as this feeling is among all humans, it\u2019s one that Vernon almost fails to bring to the forefront of our minds. It\u2019s really more in the background of the story because we are concentrated more on understanding THIS man\u2019s trudging through the graveyard and HIS falls into the metaphorical grave. It takes a bit of work (something I\u2019m not adverse to, but also something any good writer should try to avoid whenever possible) to see this additional meaning to the story. <\/span><\/p>\nAnother issue I had against the quality of Vernon\u2019s story were the actual names on the actual tombstones. There are five, and you\u2019ll notice I didn\u2019t bother copying them in my plot description. That was a deliberate choice because those names don\u2019t really do anything for the story, which is a wasted opportunity, in my humble opinion. <\/span><\/p>\nFor the record, the five tombstone names are as follows: <\/span><\/p>\nWALKER HARRISON CROUCH<\/span><\/p>\nSKINNER DEMONE MOSSMAN<\/span><\/p>\nOXNER LOGAN HURST<\/span><\/p>\nNAYLOR MORTON BLACKWELL<\/span><\/p>\nCARVER McKAY HIMMELMAN<\/span><\/p>\nGranted, they are a bit odd\u2026 bordering on creepy, even. But mostly they\u2019re just old, antiquated names. But other than fitting a description already given, what\u2019s the value of adding them? Yes, there\u2019s the break given between sequences. And, yes, there\u2019s the continued suggestion that he\u2019s moving, passing by yet another tombstone. But the same thing can be established with or without the names. The presence of the tombstones themselves provide these things. What\u2019s the point in THOSE names, then? <\/span><\/p>\nAnswer: There really isn\u2019t any. Now if Vernon had told us the protagonist\u2019s name was the same as one of these, we could add the detail that, perhaps, he didn\u2019t know his own great-grandfather and would thus be equally unknown to his own great-grandson. Alternatively, we could be told the names were those of prominent people of the past\u2026 perhaps the graveyard or the local brewery or even the town itself shared a name with one or all of them (and my writer\u2019s mind simply loves the idea of \u201cMossman Cemetery\u201d). Alas, the five names on the tombstones don\u2019t add these or any other extra elements to the story and, as I mentioned above, feel like an opportunity lost. <\/span><\/p>\nOverall, though, Vernon\u2019s story is nearly as powerful as it is brief, and there\u2019s nothing wrong with that.<\/span><\/p>\nTHE NEW: \u201cA Wiggle of Maggot, A Curl of Bacon\u201d<\/b><\/span><\/h5>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/cd059large.jpg?resize=240%2C311&ssl=1\")
AUTHOR:<\/b> Steve Vernon<\/span><\/p>\nAPPEARANCE:<\/b> Cemetery Dance <\/span><\/i>#59: 2008.<\/span> <\/i>(Story #5 of 8)<\/span><\/p>\nPLOT (with spoilers!):<\/b><\/p>\n
Battle Carmody (that really is his name) tells his grandson, Billy, not to pick a scab, and Billy asks \u2018Why not?\u2019 The question perplexes Battle for a moment. <\/span><\/p>\nThey are on their sacred fishing trip to the Fence Woods, a place his own grandfather took him when he was Billy\u2019s age. He is making sure to make the most of it. His time in the Korean War taught him the fickleness of life. <\/span><\/p>\n\u201cScabs are a part of you,\u201d Battle tries. \u201cOur wounds are what we wear over our hurt.\u201d He goes on to explain it\u2019s best to let healing things alone. But Billy is too young for such a deep answer. He challenges his grandfather\u2019s answer with simple childhood innocence. <\/span><\/p>\nBattle has more or less raised Billy because his mother is a drunk and his father has never been there, so when Billy—who is only 13 after all—picks at the scab again, Battle tries again to steer him. \u201cScabs cover up echos,\u201d he tries this time, and goes on to explain how pain can come back to you sometimes if you wake it up. This time Billy responds with the scientific answer he learned in school. <\/span><\/p>\nBilly asks where Battle gets all of his stories. Battle says he pulls them out of his gut because they crawl around in there like worms until he lets them out to see what he\u2019s learned. Billy laughs, which does wonders for Battle. <\/span><\/p>\nAs they move along, Billy accidentally steps in a rotting rabbit corpse. As Battle helps him clean the smelly decay from his shoe, he sees and collects a few maggots. Fat maggots, he tells Billy, are very good bait. Billy asks what killed the rabbit, and Battle says it was maybe just old age. The silence that lingers afterwards is uncomfortable to Battle, so he distracts them both by giving Billy his kabar knife, telling him he gets to clean any fish they catch. <\/span><\/p>\nThe ploy works. Billy stuff the knife into his belt and stands a little taller. Battle considers letting the boy keep the knife, knowing that \u201cOld Granddaddy Death\u201d would be catching up to him sooner or later. <\/span><\/p>\nBattle warns Billy not to cut himself with the knife, though he\u2019s not really worried because he already taught him right. Together, they stuff their pockets with more maggots to join the half-cooked bacon they\u2019d packed there earlier for bait, and set off deeper into the woods. Battle knows that with a wiggle of maggot and a curl of bacon, even the best fish would be unable to smell the barbed metal hook in the water.<\/span><\/p>\nBattle thinks about how fish are much like boys: both are open and hungry and ready to be fed. With boys, though, it\u2019s stories from grandfathers that are their bait. Battle knows all this because as a young man in Korea he had learned the many ways a man can die. <\/span><\/p>\nBilly seems to read Battle\u2019s thoughts, asking suddenly what he had done in the war. Battle gives him the same answer he\u2019d done many times before: \u201cDucked down and concentrated on remaining unshot.\u201d But this time Billy pushes the issue. \u201cTell me the real answer,\u201d he says. <\/span><\/p>\nBattle\u2019s thoughts are sent back in time to his days in Korea. <\/span><\/p>\n*<\/span> *<\/span> *<\/span><\/p>\nThey\u2019d given him the rank of First Lieutenant, though that was mostly because one of the others had been killed while another had retired. The truth was that the silver-colored bar on his shoulder meant next to nothing in deep North Korean territory. <\/span><\/p>\nOne of his men, Sergeant Trumble, asked if he\u2019s lost. Lieutenant Battle Carmody (named such because it had taken two whole days for his own mother to bear him: “It was a battle,”she\u2019d said when it was finally over before she died six days later) told him, \u201cNo. We are not lost. I\u2019m lost. You\u2019re right where you need to be. Following me.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\nSergeant Trumble said that reminded him of a story and proceeded to tell a tale about a man who got lost in a dense fog and whose new calf eats their way home through the fog and that the whole family lived on calorie-free fog meat for years afterwards. <\/span><\/p>\nJust then, a North Korean soldier walked out of the jungle and towards the Marines. Battle and his entire platoon melted into the dense cover and waited in perfect silence. Battle tried to decide what to do while the soldier came closer and his platoon awaited his orders. It would have been an easy kill, no doubt, but Battle worried about how many other North Koreans were nearby. It could have been a couple. It could have been a whole division. The soldier walked straight towards Battle, and that\u2019s when things went very bad very fast. <\/span><\/p>\n*<\/span> *<\/span> *<\/span><\/p>\nHooking a trout is a skill which involves timing and experience. Battle learned it by failing over and over again when his own Grandpa Jake had caught fish after fish. <\/span><\/p>\nA trick like that, Battle recalls, is one that you either learn or don\u2019t learn. It\u2019s also \u201ca little like show and tell, only the other way around.\u201d With his Grandpa Jake, it was all show and no tell. <\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s the same way Battle tries to teach Billy now, only he\u2019s modified things a bit. He\u2019s softer. He\u2019s changing the trail to suit his own needs. Problem is, \u201csome trails you follow, and some will follow you.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n*<\/span> *<\/span> *<\/span><\/p>\nBattle let go of his gun and quietly pulled out his kabar knife, making sure to keep the blade in dirt so it wouldn\u2019t glint in the sun and give away his position. His thought was to make a quiet kill if necessary. The North Korean soldier stopped just three feet from Battle and proceeded to light a cigarette. Battle needed him to move just one step closer. But the soldier didn\u2019t move closer. He unzipped his fly and proceeded to urinate in Battle\u2019s direction. It was the sound of the urine hitting Battle\u2019s leather boots that got things rolling. <\/span><\/p>\n*<\/span> *<\/span> *<\/span><\/p>\nBattle is enjoying the soul-searching activity of casting of his line into the water. He thinks: \u201cIt isn\u2019t always about catching fish, you know. If you\u2019re careful, you can catch gods this way.\u201d He thinks about how doing nothing but feeling the sun and the wind is sometimes its own reward. <\/span><\/p>\nHe hears a trout jump, and then Billy falls in the water. He\u2019d been reaching for a turtle and lost his footing. Battle isn\u2019t worried because he knows Billy can swim and the current isn\u2019t strong. A few seconds later, though, he sees the water turning red. <\/span><\/p>\n*<\/span> *<\/span> *<\/span><\/p>\nBattle added another clip to his M3 and squeezed off several more rounds over his shoulder as his platoon retreated through the woods. Someone to his left was praying as he ran. Battle\u2019s fingers couldn\u2019t find the next clip of ammo in his pocket. The whole jungle had exploded with gunfire. Someone else to Battle\u2019s right started screaming about his legs. <\/span><\/p>\nBattle didn\u2019t know many of their names. He\u2019d given up trying after too many deaths. The war had taught him the lie of death, which was that people didn\u2019t really \u201cpass away\u201d or \u201cexpire.\u201d Death was often far more violent than that. <\/span><\/p>\nHe didn\u2019t know if it was the entire North Korean army that was chasing him or only a half-dozen. He didn’t have time to tend the wounded, only to keep running like everyone else. He saw a machine gun nest and also some snipers picking off his troops. Everything was a terror-strewn chaos of noise and blood. <\/span><\/p>\nThen Battle\u2019s right thigh got hit and he began to fall. But even before he hit the ground his belly got hit too, and immediately he felt \u201ca long snake running out\u201d of him before he blacked out. <\/span><\/p>\n*<\/span> *<\/span> *<\/span><\/p>\nBattle is having a hard time holding onto Billy. He\u2019s too slippery with blood and river water. He sees the problem: Billy had put the kabar knife in his belt without a sheath and when he fell it slid up and \u201ccaught him in the soft of his belly.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThere is chaos and panic and blood as Battle tries to hold the wound closed and Billy screams. The blood attracts a mosquito and another jumping trout. The wound keeps pumping, though, as the maggots and bacon spilled from their pockets. Battle has no idea what to do.<\/span><\/p>\nExcept suddenly he does. <\/span><\/p>\n*<\/span> *<\/span> *<\/span><\/p>\nBattle woke alone in the woods. He tried to move but couldn\u2019t. <\/span><\/p>\nHe looked at the night sky and remembered a somewhat violent story his Grandpa Jake told him about how the Day married the Sky, got jealous, and stabbed Mother Night with a crescent moon, then shot her up full of star holes. <\/span><\/p>\nHe worked his hand slowly towards his middle. The wetness there reminded him of a game his Grandpa Jake had played every Halloween. In the dark, young Battle and his friends had been invited to feel a witch\u2019s eyeball (peeled grape), witch\u2019s guts (bowl of cold spaghetti), and witch\u2019s brain (scrambled eggs). Only the guts he felt in Korea were his real guts, his intestines. Touching them only caused them to slide out of his wound a little further. <\/span><\/p>\nBattle remembered another story his Grandpa Jake told him about how the fakirs of India would cut a hole in their stomachs and tie a rope to the end of their intestines and play a flute and both rope and intestines would rise towards the sky. <\/span><\/p>\nIt was then that Battle saw his actual Grandpa Jake there in those North Korean woods. He was almost naked, clothed only in scrapbook photographs and a few notes he\u2019d written onto the backs of his hands. Battle wasn\u2019t sure if it was his actual Grandpa or maybe \u201csomething else just wearing his memory.\u201d Either way, the figure took his spilled intestines, coiled them like a rope, and cast them into the woods like a fishing line. <\/span><\/p>\nMoments later, Battle felt something pulling back from the other end. <\/span><\/p>\n*<\/span> *<\/span> *<\/span><\/p>\nTending over Billy, Battle gives him words of encouragement while he unbuttons his shirt: a thing he almost never does in the light of day. Even in the darkness, he only ever gets undressed with his eyes closed. He doesn\u2019t like to see the thing he\u2019d been \u201cwearing\u201d since that time in North Korea. <\/span><\/p>\nHe knows now that much or maybe all of what happened then was a fever dream that came out of his injuries, but nevertheless he also believe something grew on his open wound that saved his life. A fungus, he thinks, \u201cfallen from some lonely night sky.\u201d It was a color he\u2019d never seen before or since, and it ran a long, lacy finger up through his wound and into his heart. <\/span><\/p>\nHe never knew whether he let the sky fungus grow on him or whether the event was just something that happened <\/span>to <\/span><\/i>him. He only knows he didn\u2019t fight it because he knew it would be good for him. <\/span><\/p>\nWhat Battle does next is take the kabar knife and cut open his belly once more. It\u2019s hard work because the sky fungus has built up a thick coating through all the years, but he gets it done and scrapes some of it off and puts it on Billy\u2019s wound. The sky fungus sucked right on and then all the rest of it pulled off of Battle and onto Billy. <\/span><\/p>\nIt seems for a moment that everything will be okay, but Battle feels there\u2019s something else that needs to be done. He works the knife back into his belly, opening his old wound again. Soon he has the coil of his intestines in his hands. They are more than flesh and blood, though. They are memories and experience and dream. <\/span><\/p>\n
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AUTHOR:<\/b>