Tales of the Master: Part 5

a novel - Excerpt Five

XV. - A Parting

Closing the book was like waking up, afraid that a bad dream wasn’t over.

The story of the man and his wives hit too close to home. Events in the tales and the circumstances of my last day on this fertile earth were bothersome: the brown one and little Ali; the lost sons and the stray dogs; the magic of my little master’s statement, “She loves you;” my wife and the four wives; all the coincidences had me off balance.

When I woke up that Saturday morning, everything had felt settled. My little mental day-timer was all filled in. Eat breakfast, kill some time while my wife packed up, watch her go, kill myself, everything was decided. There was a comfortable sealed wrapper around that fated day.

I felt a peace, almost a serenity I had never felt. The struggle was over, as if I had spent years wrestling with a monster and finally just let go. Failure is the ultimate soft mattress. Maybe I’m sounding typically over dramatic. Maybe I’m over-mixing my metaphors. I don’t mean to. The facts seemed clear. All the drama was finished. I didn’t even expect any applause, but I did expect a final curtain and an end to all the little voices onstage.

The little purple book was rippling my little fatalistic pond. The parables were urging me to do something. I didn’t have the energy left to change my path. Doomed artist melancholy doesn’t mix well with carnival magic.

Ali interrupted my soliloquy. “Karma.” First his voice was strong. Then it was soft beside me. “Karma.”

I looked at him. He was so thin. And though he was coffee brown, I suddenly realized that there was cream in his skin, a subtle paleness in the liquid of his life. We had made our little journey together. It was time to let things happen the way I had seen them happening.

“Yeah, Ali. Time for my karma to come true.”

Ali shook his head. “Karma.” He pointed at his heart with a delicate finger. “Karma.” He pointed at my heart. His feather touch on my chest made me shiver. “Karma,” he said.

I stood and stepped away from him.

There was a lamppost at the curb and I leaned against it. I leaned against it like I was watchin’ all the girls go by. I looked up the street and saw the Ryder van at my house. I had hoped it would be gone. My plan was for her to be gone by now, just gone.

I turned to Ali. He was sitting alone on the black metal bench. The purple book rested in his lap. His eyes were on me. They had been on me all morning, and now, at noon, I couldn’t bear it much longer. “Go home, Ali.”

Ali shook his head. “Master.” He held the book out to me. “Master.”

“No, Ali. I am not your master.”

He laughed at me. I know when someone is laughing at me. Ali laughed at me. He held the book up. “Master.”

Of course, I had the story wrong. I had been thinking that as the tales paralleled my day, my life, that my role was the master. Suddenly I was laughing at me.

Ali joined in holding up the book. “Hah, hah, hah...master. Master!”

In the first of the tales the master had found the young brown boy. I had found Ali. That made me the master. In reality though, Ali had found me. I remembered it now.

The first time Ali and I met was a winter morning. I stood outside in a prairie wind and rubbed my face with my gloved hands. I had tried to rub my face away. My wife had told me the night before that she was going to start looking for another place to live.

When I lowered my hands, Ali had been there like a bird trapped in a green down filled parka, a flutter under a pile of laundry. Only a circle of his face peeked out of the cinched hood. His eyes had looked hungry. I had given him the fateful doughnut. Ali had found me.

Ali was the master.

I laughed again. “Hah, hah, hah...master.” I pointed at Ali. “Master?”

He held up the book of tales. “Master.”

“So what now, master? What do I do now?” We were right in front of Stram’s Bar. A Beatles’ song was slipping off the jukebox and into the street around us.

“I’m looking through you,” sang John, or was it Paul? I used to know.

“What do I do now, master?” I pointed at the tavern door. “A little Rubber Soul and some beer? Or...” I pointed at the moving van up the street. “...Or my life up the street? Which will it be?” I bowed to him, mocking the situation, mocking the “Tales of the Master,” mocking him. Most of all I was mocking me, mocking myself for starting to see the story in that damned purple book as my own.

“Which will it be, master?”

Ali stood up. A breeze could have picked him up like cottonwood seed. Once more my little master spoke. “Choose.”

“That simple, huh?” I wasn’t mocking now. I was too tired to mock.

“Choose,” he said.

John or Paul’s voice came out of Stram’s. “You’re not the same.”

“Choose.”