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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Character Based
- Published: 04/19/2016
In Search of the Unfinished Story
By Charles E.J. Moulton
Roddy felt that urge again. The urge that went so deep that it transcended the most profound parts of his being and dug into the eternal. His true self. When these urges came, there was only one way to go: sit down by the computer and write, get it out of his system, or maybe even better: comprehend what was going on inside him – or what it was that he was feeling. He felt like a cartographer, mapping out his soul, why certain things were happening in his life, and moreover: how he wanted to react to them. He had often experienced how much of a therapy writing had become. Finding his middle, resting in his soul, finding the true reasons for things, not being dependant on anything, but loving.
Every word was a bridge, a bridge to another shore, a new feeling, a new attitude. The problem was actually finding words that healed, words whose effect reached the positive outcome for everyone, solved problems. A true challenge.
Clear tap water, not coffee, graced his table. Meditation music soothed his senses through the courtesy of YouTube. All along, Roddy felt like a goldminer digging deeper and deeper into his own soul to find the real reasons for problems and the patterns in his own life. Patterns, honesty. There were patterns, were there not? And these patterns were not only clear to him now. They were painfully obvious. So painfully obvious that a road crystalized before him. A road that he had been walking on for a long time. A road that now become clear. A road that really emerged out of his own spirit, his own need for truth, spiritual truth.
His wife, her entire persona challenged him, but in a good way. No one said it was easy, but her amazing strength demanded of him to be honest and strong. Her ruthless honesty and need to lay things on the table had created a need in Roddy to search inside himself for what he wanted. The thousand, nay, millions, of influences always present in his life had him going to the very bottom of his soul to see what path of the crossroads he should take.
That was the issue, wasn’t it? Roddy, constantly at an emotional crossroads, constantly choosing, constantly scared shitless of making the wrong choice. The only way to make the right choice was to be at peace with himself. Peace. The creation of peace in his own soul was not only important, it was crucial to his existance. To everyone.
So, Roddy sat there, writing, thinking, feeling, trying to find the right emotions. Yes, the right emotions, not only the right words. Dependance had been an issue, hadn’t it? He sat there thinking about the fact that one of his conductors had taken away a solo song from a big concert of his – and that he cared only half way. That it mattered way less than it would’ve mattered before. He thought about the fact that he kept learning more and more throughout the course of his life. Calm, being centered, concentrating on his task, having faith.
That was the ticket.
And so, Roddy wrote his stories, realizing that writing had become a therapy.
And he was the better for it.
Roddy began one story, improvising as he went along, making up a storyline, sinking deeper into its own universe:
Story number one:
“Please, Hailee.” She remembered her mom shaking her finger at her. “If you feel dizzy or nervous, eat an apple. I have put an apple on your night time table.”
“I just have a cold, mom,” she spat back.
“You are a diabetic, Hailee,” Mom answered.
Not long after she fell, bumped her head on the chair and grew unconcious. Nobody was at home at the time. Josh was at school, mom was at the store, dad had a gig. Hailee frothed at the mouth, shook, bled and then just lay there, next to her teddybears, alone.
Hailee found herself on the floor again.
When Hailee woke up, her mom caressed her hair.
“Honey, wake up, the doctor is here.”
That old familiar voice spoke.
Hailee opened her eyes, seeing only the edge of her bed, bits of dust under her bed. Her mouth and face felt wet. The damp sensation felt cosy in a way. However, Hailee realized that the dampness came from another fit of low blood sugar. Her head hurt. Ow, wow, that hurt.
“Mom,” she cried. “Help me up.”
An unfamiliar hand scooped its grip under her head. Another grabbed her under the armpits and positioned her against the bed. Now she saw that there were two other people in here. Geez, this was wierd. Two strange people in her room. They looked kinda nice, but still she disliked strangers in her room. Besides, they were wearing shiny jackets and had not taken their shoes off.
Mom lifted her hand and patted her cheek.
“These folks are from the hospital, Hailee,” her mom said. “You hear me?”
Hailee started shivering. “I’m cold. Bring me a blanket.”
Two new people, one guy that looked like a rapper and one that was full of freckles, came in with one of those long portable beds they put in an ambulance.
In middle of his story, Roddy stopped, wondering how the story could continue. He wasn’t quite sure, so he leafed through his archives and found another unfinished story.
Here’s how it read.
Story number two:
The warmth inside grew as the cascade of raindrops smattered against the window outside. In here, in the comfort of her own house, she felt safe. The fresh, friendly flavour of the peppermint tea caressed the tongue like a kind hand caressing a cat. Her warm blanket around her shoulders gave her calm.
Her dismayed staff hated her. Roger knew Susie’s decision not to interfere in the feud came from a solid stance to respect her employees. The results had been different. Now, another week of bitchy looks hammered her self confidence to a record breaking low.
The scent of eucalyptus curved in meandering pathways up her nostrils and her lungs were filled with the warm air from the open fireplace. The stereo sound of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker could still compete with the banging of the raindrops outside. Knowing that she had no reason to go out anymore today gave her the satisfaction that ballet music just barely lacked.
Inside that fireplace, the flames danced. They looked like flexible yellow clots of fluid cream performing little sweet rhumbas in the air. The cracks that left the flames seemed to be small pests of provocative rebel yells in the light of those tranquil elements of heat.
The sounds from the kitchen promised her a pleasant evening. Roger’s choice of wine fell upon the spicy Spanish sort, so he had announced. That and a choice of grapes, crackers and cheese and lots of lovemaking would give her a long promised battery charge.
Roddy smiled again, enticed by a tale he had forgotten that he had written at all.
He pondered over the continuation of the last story, but found himself searching for more stories, more unfinished works of art.
He found a third unfinished tale in his computer.
Story number three:
After centuries of holding on to that emotion, I suddenly let it go. And although it technically was an emotion, an attitude, it was a stone, a large boulder, really, a hindrance on my way to crossing the bridge to the other side. The other side of what?
My life. My hope. My freedom. My ability to let go.
In my last life, my previous incarnation as opposed to this one, i.e. when my spirit resided in another body, I was born in a small town in Mexico in 1876.
I worked myself up as a wine merchant, one that owned large expanses of land. In fact, I had just turned 36 when I reached what I thought was the Zenith of my career. For years, another local wine merchant had worked against me, jealous of my success, constantly trying to catch up with me. It became quite aggressive.
It so happened that I found myself invited to join a conglomerate of wine merchants, who wanted to meet in London, England in the early spring of 1912. I still don't know why they chose me to be there. What was even stranger, my enemy was invited there, as well. All these merchants, 12 of us all in all, had been invited by Rockefeller to converse about the international wine industry. Vanderbildt and Rockefeller were paying for twelve tickets in first class on the maiden voyage of the Titanic.
Now, it so happened that my rival local wine merchant also had been invited. Two Mexican wine producers among international hotshots? Maybe Rockefeller liked Mexico.
Anyway, all went well to begin with. My rival, Luis Bandega, and I, Julio Arras, found ourselves chatting about this and that and even planning to start a company together. I couldn't wait to tell my wife and kids the amazing news of our unexpected friendship.
The night the Titanic sank I was right on deck with all those other first class passengers. I felt wonderful to be a part of this jet-set, this success, this money, this educated crowd. Molly Brown, Vanderbildt, Bandega and I had brought our drinks up on deck and were just commenting on how still the ocean looked today.
I even think it was Bandega that suggested we take a few days off in New York just to buy some things for our wives. I suggested we open an office in New York City.
On that deck, my rival and I suddenly started fighting about the organization of our project. I said: “We should go global!” He completely disagreed. He wanted to go local, concentrating on our region. This led to a loud fight, one that bordered on the insane. Shortly before we hit the iceberg, he threatened to punch me in the face, wondering why he had trusted me in the first place.
We lost sight of each other once we understood that we were sinking, running for our lives. I saw him holding on to the lower deck, going down and drowning while I, poor sod, was saved, carried away to the RMS Carpathia. In that incarnation, I never ever got over fighting with my rival on the deck of that sinking ship. It drove me to try to make amends with enemies. After all, I had almost become friends with my enemy.
I became very successful as a wine merchant in my previous life, but always felt very guilty about receiving that success because my enemy had never seen our project being realized. The result was trying to understand my enemies, even in this life, but also not being able to let them go, even going to great lengths trying to befriend people that were different than me just to prove to myself it could be done. A huge and quite traumatic undertaking.
I had a dream yesterday about my previous life and why I had befriended a person so different than myself, why my soul longed to understand what was different than myself. I saw myself on the deck of that sinking ship. I guess they call it “Survivor Guilt”. The dream, however, caused me to close my eyes and embrace my friend in my mind.
Energies exist.
Trusting God to take care of you and your family, and ultimately you and your family’s happy life, creates amazing possibilities. Your guardian angels will love you.
Don’t chase your enemies. Let them go.
Embrace them in your mind and just concentrate on what you love.
That’s enough to create a miracle, because there is love everywhere.
Forgiving someone makes you forgive yourself for making the wrong decisions, because wrong decisions are part of life. Just don’t ponder over those wrong decisions. If you do, you will make new wrong decisions. Look to the future, be faithful to your loved ones and you will see your life change. Collect your good moments like other people collect coins. Remember what is good in your life, write the good stuff down.
After centuries of holding on to that emotion, I suddenly let it go. And although it technically was an emotion, an attitude, it was a stone, a large boulder, really, a hindrance on my way to crossing the bridge to the other side. The other side of what?
My life. My hope. My freedom. My ability to let go.
The next day, the sunrise was amazingly beautiful and the whole scene me understand that I no longer had to hold a grudge or even blame myself for befriending someone that was different, being able to let my supposed enemy mine turn into a threshold guardian, teaching me to accept what was different and walk away from conflict when it was necessary.
Life is a row of choices.
As I write this, John Farnham’s great song “You’re the Voice” is blasting through the speakers of my story. John, who played Jesus in Lloyd-Webber’s Rock-Opera. Jesus, to whom I feel connected. I was a friend with a person who was an atheist, with whom I saw an UFO. So, yes, I have seen many different things.
Roddy sat back in his chair, scratching his head, terrified and at the same time fascinated by his own words. No story could grab his attention fully, so he flipped to another document, another unfinished account.
Story number four:
Art focused on the clicking of the second indicator. The continuity of that sound calmed him down. He dared not take his eyes off his counterpart, so he listened to the clicking of the clock. Time neither hoped to influence an execution, nor did it want to pardon the infiltrator.
Time, the ultimate Lady Justice.
Who judged him now?
Nothing in his opposite self differed from his own persona.
In fact, by the kitchen table on the old wooden chair his other self sat and gazed back with the same fear he displayed. This was more than a mirror. This real self breathed, moved, acted and blinked.
Both Art 1 and Art 2 sat still, watching each other.
The noises from the outside, the cars and ambulances, the barking dogs, the occasional laugh, the screeching tires and coughing bums, all of that drifted away to become sordid and remote.
He remembered falling sleeping with his face flat down on the table and then waking up being stared at by his other self. The memories of a drunken spree at his own party faded. The hangover turned to dust. Death stared at itself. Dimensions split.
Art closed his mouth slowly, letting one drop of saliva slow motion itself down upon his hand. Art felt like a moonwalker.
Neil Armstrong is dead, he thought to himself. Now, I am the moonwalker, not Michael. Slow motion. Everything moved in slow motion. The bird that flew outside the window, had he looked at it, moved slower.
“Did I drink too much yesterday?”
Boy, his own voice sounded nasal. Did he really talk like that? And that chin. His ex-girlfriend was right. He looked like Ernest Borgnine. Not someone to meet on a dark night.
“I did,” Art responded. “I don’t know about you.”
Roddy again, among the hundreds of finished and published stories, found countless unfinished ones, wondering what happened to stories once they wandered in limbo for over a year. Zombie stories, unfinished tales with loose ends. Did such a thing exist?
Anyway, Roddy searched his computer and found another unfinished tale.
Story number five:
The elder moved his elbow, making the equation. He was thinking, that much was clear. George had no idea what to expect. Would his proposal come through? If it did, would the council actually grant him to go through with the project?
The elder grinned, adding up the costs and sighing.
“Sir,” he said. “I think we have a winner on our hands.”
The man opposite the elder smiled, nervously. His eyes glanced across the elegant brown desk at the man in the leather chair.
“Does that mean I can go through with the plan?”
The elder leaned back and shrugged.
“I think it has some weak points, but all in all there is the stronger equation that it has very low costs and a high effectivity.”
Hmm. What had made Roddy write that, he wondered.
No use contemplating over that now.
Onwards and upwards went the search to find new and unfinished tales of weird suspense. Roddy got lucky. He found a sixth story. This one, quite confusing.
Story number six:
Silly, wasn’t it? As I was walking home, I found myself searching in my pockets for gold pieces. There were none there, of course. As if Monty had put them there by mistake as he put on my jacket when he went out for a smoke.
I yawned, the four beers definately making themselves remembered in my brain. Four beers and three whiskeys.
I reached my flat and lay down on my bed, falling asleep right away in my coat and hat and jeans and all. I had planned in getting undressed, but somehow that never happened.
I woke up that next Saturday morning, when a female colleague asked me where I was. I told her I was sleeping on my bed and trying to figure out what bitch called me at nine.
She laughed into my ear and claimed I had actually made an appointment with her at nine to eat breakfast at the bistro on fifth avenue. Needless to say, I was full of shit, so I hung up and went back to sleep.
I woke up, somewhat more sober at four in the afternoon. Only thing was that I stunk. That smell would have scared away a moldy old racoon.
Moldy old racoon?
Some phrases were certainly bewildering.
Anyway, Roddy took another sip of his water and flipped the documents, trying to find that one story worth finishing, loving the fact that he had written many stories with loose ends. That’s when the idea struck him to put them all together in one story, maybe about an author in search of ... an unfinished story?
On with the search!
Story number seven:
Home.
All he wanted was to go home.
Freddie kneeled down on the wet, soft grass and cried.
Okay, that was short, but somehow the strongest of all the beginnings he had read so far. Who was this Freddie and why was he laying on the grass, crying? What had happened to him to make him feel so lost. Where was he and why was he so far away from home?
Restless, Roddy closed story number seven and opened another unfinished treasure chest.
Story number eight:
It.
What a funny word.
It?
Not it.
The “it” was he ... himself.
A replica, a doppelgänger, an accidental ricochet?
“Who are you?”
No answer.
“Are you ... me?”
The creature nodded, smiling.
Ooh, what a spooky little tale.
That would be worth working on.
Roddy, however was restless.
Story number nine:
“Oil and water, damn it, we’re like oil and water!”
Kent felt weird, walking in his long johns around the block in his neighborhood. That wine bottle dangled in his right hand, the keys somehow stuck into his underwear. He raised the Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon to his lips and took a sip of the wine from the bottle, muttering things about her. Damn it. She really was irritating.
A car passed, a station wagon. And Kent wondered if people inside were thinking what kind of stupid person he was, walking in an old pullover and his long johns through the nightly streets.
“Damn it, she is a pain in the ass!”
Kent’s feelings were in turmoil. Oh, heck. If this were a story, he would have to show and not tell. Hogwash. Damn it. He really was in pain. Pain. Oil and frigging water.
There she sat in front of the computer, screaming at him that mowing the lawn was more than just pushing the damn machine back and forth. He had mowed the lawn, had he not? He had frigging cut the hedge, had he not? One word, one silly little word, that he wanted to practice his music for the audition tomorrow, had been enough. It had not been much. Just a small little word and then the woman had become a tornado. Gee wiz, he had kmown it. Oh, what a stupid situation.
Eventually, he sat there on his big arse tipping at the keys of the computer, his wife in bed, a big bar of chocolate in his belly, damn stupid for a diabetic, and wondering how to write this story. What was he doing wrong? Those voices in his head, what were they?
Oil and water, it boiled down to that, didn’t it?
But not always.
A couple of night beforehand, Kent had been dancing with his wife and she had looked at him in a way that made him melt. Melt. Her strength, his strength.
Roddy remembered that night, the night he had fought with his wife and ended up writing about it, just to get rid of the tension.
He sighed, trying to let go of that emotion by finding another tale that hadn’t been finished. Roddy got lucky,
This was his lucky number ... and it was a story that Roddy decided to finish.
He called story number ten ...
“Rumble”
Somewhere between Little Rock and Callamazzoo, George got that weird, gnawing feeling again. The hunch had been there only a minute or two, lingering inside his dozing body, when he sat up with such zest that his straw hat fell off his head. It tumbled down and rolled back and forth on the rim until it remained motionless. For one moment, George imagined hearing noises in the train wagon. Every crack seemed to indicate that a rat had made itself a nest in here. Every rattle was a sign that a person, even, had arrived. But that was silly, wasn't it? The hunch wasn’t about the wagon, was it? It was who was waiting for him at the next train station.
His hand searched the wooden floor, past straws, splinters and nails, onto the rim of that stolen hat. He grabbed it with two fingers of his right hand, as was his custom, setting it down on the left one, playing with it, running his fingers along the rim, almost without thinking of it. He took long exhaled breaths, shivering to the bone and producing almost inaudible groans.
He paused, remembered, waited, realized what could be, what he had forgotten about his escape and if he could repair what had been destroyed in the first place.
He had no idea how he knew that they were waiting for him. He just did.
“Damn it,” he cursed under his breath, “Rawlins sent his posse on me!”
For a while, George rocked back and forth in a slightly helpless motion, letting the train throw him slightly off balance, his head waddling from side to side like a ball on a stick pushed about by the wind. He listened to the eternal “ka-chunk” of the train and whimpered.
“He’s here.”
He looked out the window past the two horses. The one stallion blocked the left window, but through the other opening he could clearly see the next railway station beyond the curving tracks.
Nobody but Barney had seen him jump into the wagon, right? Nobody except the village idiot, his constant moaning chew, turning his day into a nightmare. In retrospect, Barney’s silly smile and winking, batting eyelids had told him as much. But the mistake was thinking Barney was way too stupid to leave his poppyfield and tell Rawlins, the great Sherriff, that the escaped convict, George, had been seen again. Seeing him stealing the jewelry, getting him jailed. Barney, seeing him escaping, now with nothing but a loaf of bread in his hands and Rawlins snoring behind his desk. Okay, a loaf of bread with a saw in it, but still. George gazed out the window toward the approaching station and wondered if his hunch told him what was true.
So George Taylor stretched his neck far and wide into the empty air and winced, trying to focus on the sandy plain by the building marked Train Station.
He had had these hunches before.
The posse appeared as a speck of dust on the horizon and mutated into three vibrant dots. Three tall men on black horses emerged out of the dark and suddenly made George cringe. It was difficult to say if Rawlins was sneering or not. But it was Rawlins, all right. Hot steaming Hell, Rawlins had crushed his dreams of freedom. On the other hand, Rawlins always sneered, happy or not.
The dot now not only vibrated. It bounced. And yes, the closer the train came to Callamazoo, the clearer did George see that Jared, the hobo, now almost got strangled by the neck-rope, caused by a stallion's pain, Rawlins tugging at the beast's ears, pulling the ropes, the horse's sides attacked by angry heelspikes. Jared had given him a loaf of bread with a sharp saw baked into its middle in the hope of being able to join him out west.
George rushed to the opening of the wagon, panted, saw the steady ritardando of the train, shivered, hoped to jump off at the right time and knew how difficult it would be.
“Too fast,” he whispered under his breath, watching the racing tracks below his vision. Was he going to be able to escape the law now?
“Now or never, George,” he whispered to himself.
Barney. The buggar had been schlepped to the railway station after all. No dream of escaping Arkansas, hiding in the hills and getting back at Rawlins. Getting back? To where? Just bars and Rawlins sneering, damn happy that he might be hitting the homerun after all.
George looked at the approaching posse, the ground, the thrusting stallions. He saw Barney dancing, his spirit obviously overcome with joy over having caught a thief.
"Too damn fast," George repeated to himself.
While wondering how the Sherriff could have caught up with the train so fast, George tumbled out onto a grassy knoll, rolling down a steep hill, trying not to moan, actually moaning like crazy and finally landing in a bush.
The scratches on his skin covered his whole body now, through his cotton shirt and even through his pants.
He tumbled up, fell again, and realized he had bruised, if not sprained, his ankle. Cringing and wincing, he rubbed it repeatedly, wondering if he was going to be able to walk again. Walk? Probably not.
There was a hiss, a hoot and and a clang and the neighing of horses. Closer now. A gallop that approached closer and closer reached his eardrum. Soon enough, George found himself trying to get up, but not being able to.
Then, Rawlins arrived, sighing, shrugging, shaking his head. He cringed as he looked up at Rawlins, sitting on his stallion, flashing his Colt Peacemaker.
“Brother,” Sherriff Rawlins Taylor mused, his drawl too ambivalent to be mean, “the only reason why you ain't in the noose yet is that the law is family. Why you doing this again?”
The Sherriff paused, pushing up his hat with his gun.
George shrugged.
“You were always more popular, Rawlins.”
The stallion shifted from hoof to hoof as Jared was interrogated by the train station.
“Barney saw you.”
George moaned. “Stupid.”
Rawlins pointed the gun at his brother. “Don’t call your brother stupid,” he spat. “We should be happy that he has a job shoeing horses.”
George nodded. “Ma certainly was relieved.”
He looked up at his imposing brother on the horse.
“You got to promise me that you’re gonna treat me nice, though!”
“What do you think will happen if you go back to the farm?” Rawlins cackled.
“Ma will be happy.”
Rawlins opened his dust-ridden mouth, displaying white ivory fang-like teeth.
“She will arrange the best darned barbecue square dance in the whole damn state,” Rawlins sing-songed. “And, hot darned, you will be the main attraction.”
"And Jared?"
"He’s the one that used your own discontent against you,” Rawlins said. “I could have given ya a job at the office,” Rawlins cackled in a jiglike melodious tone. “Instead, ya go robbin’ jewelry stores and stealing hats with a nitwit hobo just to get back at me. And ma loves you just as much as Barney and me. Damn it, you were dumb.”
George looked up, thought for a moment, reviewed the situation. One sunray danced on Rawlins’ hat, came flying over and hit his face. Rawlins and the sunshine. What a silly thought. Then, suddenly, he realized it wasn’t silly at all. It had been the hunch, hadn’t it?
Hadn’t it?
George sighed, looking down, wondering if Jared would be blaming him for being caught.
"Jared takes full responsibility for pulling you into his web of crime," the Sherriff mumbled. "He told us that he wouldn’t mess with the brother of the law no more. Now all you got to do is go back to Ma on the farm and live a good life."
George looked at his sprained ankle.
"What about my sprained ankle?"
George's big brother cocked his head.
"Well, you better be prepared for some home cooking."
In the distance, a coyote howled. It sounded like the lost cries of damned convicts. To which good old George, the prodigal son, did not belong any more. He could feel it. Ma did love him, after all, so crime was not an option. All that had to be happening there was for Jared not to tempt him again.
“What if Jared comes back?”
Rawlins jumped off his horse and helped his brother up.
“Ma has a gun,” Rawlins sneered. “And a prodigal son like you has to work on self-discipline.”
“Self-discipline, huh?”
“New word, hey?”
George looked at his successful brother. For the first time in his life, on that dusty road so close to where he had almost turned into a forever lawless criminal, George wondered if he could become successful, too. Marriage? Kids? Job? Take over the farm? Damn it, one step at a time. A full-throttle gallop from crime to stardom would give any Arkansas do-gooder the goosebumps.
“I’d like to work on the farm, Rawlins. I really would.”
Rawlins smiled. “Ma will like that. She told me you’re her little boy and that she will give you plenty of love and adoration now.”
“She’s never said that to me before,” George stuttered.
“She did now,” Rawlins mused. “You prodigal son, you.”
Riding off toward the sunset, George saw Jared being taken away by the Deputy.
Getting back at Rawlins? How silly that had seemed now. But what if he grew discontent again. Maybe he could start shoeing horses like Barney to relieve himself of pain.
No one had ever disliked him. Not really. He just hadn’t raised his voice, telling Ma to give him a compliment now and then.
Was George going to be a favorite now? Maybe, maybe not. Happy? Yeah, maybe. Even probably. Beans and ham on the terrace, the occasional saloon whiskey. Sitting in the rocking chair on the porch and looking at the sky until dawn and darned well near crying, because God had given him a second chance.
Damn well, second chance?
A farm, one day a wife and kids and a whole lot of Arkansas lovin’, far away from the wild west rumble and ruckus of dirty live stock train wagons.
Hot dog, that sounded nice.
The hunch. He had trusted his hunch.
It had paid off trusting his intuition.
And suddenly, the sunrays that danced on Rawlins’ head also danced on George’s. And he laughed. Rawlins looked behind him toward his brother sitting on the same horse.
“What d’ya laughin’ at, kiddo?”
“I’m laughin’,” George cackled, “’cause I’m happy.”
Rawlins patted his kid bro’ on the knee.
“Happiness never killed anyone,” Rawlins smiled.
And the sun kept shining.
Finally, Roddy was content.
He had found the unfinished tale and made it complete.
He could now go to bed.
In Search of the Unfinished Story(Charles E.J. Moulton)
In Search of the Unfinished Story
By Charles E.J. Moulton
Roddy felt that urge again. The urge that went so deep that it transcended the most profound parts of his being and dug into the eternal. His true self. When these urges came, there was only one way to go: sit down by the computer and write, get it out of his system, or maybe even better: comprehend what was going on inside him – or what it was that he was feeling. He felt like a cartographer, mapping out his soul, why certain things were happening in his life, and moreover: how he wanted to react to them. He had often experienced how much of a therapy writing had become. Finding his middle, resting in his soul, finding the true reasons for things, not being dependant on anything, but loving.
Every word was a bridge, a bridge to another shore, a new feeling, a new attitude. The problem was actually finding words that healed, words whose effect reached the positive outcome for everyone, solved problems. A true challenge.
Clear tap water, not coffee, graced his table. Meditation music soothed his senses through the courtesy of YouTube. All along, Roddy felt like a goldminer digging deeper and deeper into his own soul to find the real reasons for problems and the patterns in his own life. Patterns, honesty. There were patterns, were there not? And these patterns were not only clear to him now. They were painfully obvious. So painfully obvious that a road crystalized before him. A road that he had been walking on for a long time. A road that now become clear. A road that really emerged out of his own spirit, his own need for truth, spiritual truth.
His wife, her entire persona challenged him, but in a good way. No one said it was easy, but her amazing strength demanded of him to be honest and strong. Her ruthless honesty and need to lay things on the table had created a need in Roddy to search inside himself for what he wanted. The thousand, nay, millions, of influences always present in his life had him going to the very bottom of his soul to see what path of the crossroads he should take.
That was the issue, wasn’t it? Roddy, constantly at an emotional crossroads, constantly choosing, constantly scared shitless of making the wrong choice. The only way to make the right choice was to be at peace with himself. Peace. The creation of peace in his own soul was not only important, it was crucial to his existance. To everyone.
So, Roddy sat there, writing, thinking, feeling, trying to find the right emotions. Yes, the right emotions, not only the right words. Dependance had been an issue, hadn’t it? He sat there thinking about the fact that one of his conductors had taken away a solo song from a big concert of his – and that he cared only half way. That it mattered way less than it would’ve mattered before. He thought about the fact that he kept learning more and more throughout the course of his life. Calm, being centered, concentrating on his task, having faith.
That was the ticket.
And so, Roddy wrote his stories, realizing that writing had become a therapy.
And he was the better for it.
Roddy began one story, improvising as he went along, making up a storyline, sinking deeper into its own universe:
Story number one:
“Please, Hailee.” She remembered her mom shaking her finger at her. “If you feel dizzy or nervous, eat an apple. I have put an apple on your night time table.”
“I just have a cold, mom,” she spat back.
“You are a diabetic, Hailee,” Mom answered.
Not long after she fell, bumped her head on the chair and grew unconcious. Nobody was at home at the time. Josh was at school, mom was at the store, dad had a gig. Hailee frothed at the mouth, shook, bled and then just lay there, next to her teddybears, alone.
Hailee found herself on the floor again.
When Hailee woke up, her mom caressed her hair.
“Honey, wake up, the doctor is here.”
That old familiar voice spoke.
Hailee opened her eyes, seeing only the edge of her bed, bits of dust under her bed. Her mouth and face felt wet. The damp sensation felt cosy in a way. However, Hailee realized that the dampness came from another fit of low blood sugar. Her head hurt. Ow, wow, that hurt.
“Mom,” she cried. “Help me up.”
An unfamiliar hand scooped its grip under her head. Another grabbed her under the armpits and positioned her against the bed. Now she saw that there were two other people in here. Geez, this was wierd. Two strange people in her room. They looked kinda nice, but still she disliked strangers in her room. Besides, they were wearing shiny jackets and had not taken their shoes off.
Mom lifted her hand and patted her cheek.
“These folks are from the hospital, Hailee,” her mom said. “You hear me?”
Hailee started shivering. “I’m cold. Bring me a blanket.”
Two new people, one guy that looked like a rapper and one that was full of freckles, came in with one of those long portable beds they put in an ambulance.
In middle of his story, Roddy stopped, wondering how the story could continue. He wasn’t quite sure, so he leafed through his archives and found another unfinished story.
Here’s how it read.
Story number two:
The warmth inside grew as the cascade of raindrops smattered against the window outside. In here, in the comfort of her own house, she felt safe. The fresh, friendly flavour of the peppermint tea caressed the tongue like a kind hand caressing a cat. Her warm blanket around her shoulders gave her calm.
Her dismayed staff hated her. Roger knew Susie’s decision not to interfere in the feud came from a solid stance to respect her employees. The results had been different. Now, another week of bitchy looks hammered her self confidence to a record breaking low.
The scent of eucalyptus curved in meandering pathways up her nostrils and her lungs were filled with the warm air from the open fireplace. The stereo sound of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker could still compete with the banging of the raindrops outside. Knowing that she had no reason to go out anymore today gave her the satisfaction that ballet music just barely lacked.
Inside that fireplace, the flames danced. They looked like flexible yellow clots of fluid cream performing little sweet rhumbas in the air. The cracks that left the flames seemed to be small pests of provocative rebel yells in the light of those tranquil elements of heat.
The sounds from the kitchen promised her a pleasant evening. Roger’s choice of wine fell upon the spicy Spanish sort, so he had announced. That and a choice of grapes, crackers and cheese and lots of lovemaking would give her a long promised battery charge.
Roddy smiled again, enticed by a tale he had forgotten that he had written at all.
He pondered over the continuation of the last story, but found himself searching for more stories, more unfinished works of art.
He found a third unfinished tale in his computer.
Story number three:
After centuries of holding on to that emotion, I suddenly let it go. And although it technically was an emotion, an attitude, it was a stone, a large boulder, really, a hindrance on my way to crossing the bridge to the other side. The other side of what?
My life. My hope. My freedom. My ability to let go.
In my last life, my previous incarnation as opposed to this one, i.e. when my spirit resided in another body, I was born in a small town in Mexico in 1876.
I worked myself up as a wine merchant, one that owned large expanses of land. In fact, I had just turned 36 when I reached what I thought was the Zenith of my career. For years, another local wine merchant had worked against me, jealous of my success, constantly trying to catch up with me. It became quite aggressive.
It so happened that I found myself invited to join a conglomerate of wine merchants, who wanted to meet in London, England in the early spring of 1912. I still don't know why they chose me to be there. What was even stranger, my enemy was invited there, as well. All these merchants, 12 of us all in all, had been invited by Rockefeller to converse about the international wine industry. Vanderbildt and Rockefeller were paying for twelve tickets in first class on the maiden voyage of the Titanic.
Now, it so happened that my rival local wine merchant also had been invited. Two Mexican wine producers among international hotshots? Maybe Rockefeller liked Mexico.
Anyway, all went well to begin with. My rival, Luis Bandega, and I, Julio Arras, found ourselves chatting about this and that and even planning to start a company together. I couldn't wait to tell my wife and kids the amazing news of our unexpected friendship.
The night the Titanic sank I was right on deck with all those other first class passengers. I felt wonderful to be a part of this jet-set, this success, this money, this educated crowd. Molly Brown, Vanderbildt, Bandega and I had brought our drinks up on deck and were just commenting on how still the ocean looked today.
I even think it was Bandega that suggested we take a few days off in New York just to buy some things for our wives. I suggested we open an office in New York City.
On that deck, my rival and I suddenly started fighting about the organization of our project. I said: “We should go global!” He completely disagreed. He wanted to go local, concentrating on our region. This led to a loud fight, one that bordered on the insane. Shortly before we hit the iceberg, he threatened to punch me in the face, wondering why he had trusted me in the first place.
We lost sight of each other once we understood that we were sinking, running for our lives. I saw him holding on to the lower deck, going down and drowning while I, poor sod, was saved, carried away to the RMS Carpathia. In that incarnation, I never ever got over fighting with my rival on the deck of that sinking ship. It drove me to try to make amends with enemies. After all, I had almost become friends with my enemy.
I became very successful as a wine merchant in my previous life, but always felt very guilty about receiving that success because my enemy had never seen our project being realized. The result was trying to understand my enemies, even in this life, but also not being able to let them go, even going to great lengths trying to befriend people that were different than me just to prove to myself it could be done. A huge and quite traumatic undertaking.
I had a dream yesterday about my previous life and why I had befriended a person so different than myself, why my soul longed to understand what was different than myself. I saw myself on the deck of that sinking ship. I guess they call it “Survivor Guilt”. The dream, however, caused me to close my eyes and embrace my friend in my mind.
Energies exist.
Trusting God to take care of you and your family, and ultimately you and your family’s happy life, creates amazing possibilities. Your guardian angels will love you.
Don’t chase your enemies. Let them go.
Embrace them in your mind and just concentrate on what you love.
That’s enough to create a miracle, because there is love everywhere.
Forgiving someone makes you forgive yourself for making the wrong decisions, because wrong decisions are part of life. Just don’t ponder over those wrong decisions. If you do, you will make new wrong decisions. Look to the future, be faithful to your loved ones and you will see your life change. Collect your good moments like other people collect coins. Remember what is good in your life, write the good stuff down.
After centuries of holding on to that emotion, I suddenly let it go. And although it technically was an emotion, an attitude, it was a stone, a large boulder, really, a hindrance on my way to crossing the bridge to the other side. The other side of what?
My life. My hope. My freedom. My ability to let go.
The next day, the sunrise was amazingly beautiful and the whole scene me understand that I no longer had to hold a grudge or even blame myself for befriending someone that was different, being able to let my supposed enemy mine turn into a threshold guardian, teaching me to accept what was different and walk away from conflict when it was necessary.
Life is a row of choices.
As I write this, John Farnham’s great song “You’re the Voice” is blasting through the speakers of my story. John, who played Jesus in Lloyd-Webber’s Rock-Opera. Jesus, to whom I feel connected. I was a friend with a person who was an atheist, with whom I saw an UFO. So, yes, I have seen many different things.
Roddy sat back in his chair, scratching his head, terrified and at the same time fascinated by his own words. No story could grab his attention fully, so he flipped to another document, another unfinished account.
Story number four:
Art focused on the clicking of the second indicator. The continuity of that sound calmed him down. He dared not take his eyes off his counterpart, so he listened to the clicking of the clock. Time neither hoped to influence an execution, nor did it want to pardon the infiltrator.
Time, the ultimate Lady Justice.
Who judged him now?
Nothing in his opposite self differed from his own persona.
In fact, by the kitchen table on the old wooden chair his other self sat and gazed back with the same fear he displayed. This was more than a mirror. This real self breathed, moved, acted and blinked.
Both Art 1 and Art 2 sat still, watching each other.
The noises from the outside, the cars and ambulances, the barking dogs, the occasional laugh, the screeching tires and coughing bums, all of that drifted away to become sordid and remote.
He remembered falling sleeping with his face flat down on the table and then waking up being stared at by his other self. The memories of a drunken spree at his own party faded. The hangover turned to dust. Death stared at itself. Dimensions split.
Art closed his mouth slowly, letting one drop of saliva slow motion itself down upon his hand. Art felt like a moonwalker.
Neil Armstrong is dead, he thought to himself. Now, I am the moonwalker, not Michael. Slow motion. Everything moved in slow motion. The bird that flew outside the window, had he looked at it, moved slower.
“Did I drink too much yesterday?”
Boy, his own voice sounded nasal. Did he really talk like that? And that chin. His ex-girlfriend was right. He looked like Ernest Borgnine. Not someone to meet on a dark night.
“I did,” Art responded. “I don’t know about you.”
Roddy again, among the hundreds of finished and published stories, found countless unfinished ones, wondering what happened to stories once they wandered in limbo for over a year. Zombie stories, unfinished tales with loose ends. Did such a thing exist?
Anyway, Roddy searched his computer and found another unfinished tale.
Story number five:
The elder moved his elbow, making the equation. He was thinking, that much was clear. George had no idea what to expect. Would his proposal come through? If it did, would the council actually grant him to go through with the project?
The elder grinned, adding up the costs and sighing.
“Sir,” he said. “I think we have a winner on our hands.”
The man opposite the elder smiled, nervously. His eyes glanced across the elegant brown desk at the man in the leather chair.
“Does that mean I can go through with the plan?”
The elder leaned back and shrugged.
“I think it has some weak points, but all in all there is the stronger equation that it has very low costs and a high effectivity.”
Hmm. What had made Roddy write that, he wondered.
No use contemplating over that now.
Onwards and upwards went the search to find new and unfinished tales of weird suspense. Roddy got lucky. He found a sixth story. This one, quite confusing.
Story number six:
Silly, wasn’t it? As I was walking home, I found myself searching in my pockets for gold pieces. There were none there, of course. As if Monty had put them there by mistake as he put on my jacket when he went out for a smoke.
I yawned, the four beers definately making themselves remembered in my brain. Four beers and three whiskeys.
I reached my flat and lay down on my bed, falling asleep right away in my coat and hat and jeans and all. I had planned in getting undressed, but somehow that never happened.
I woke up that next Saturday morning, when a female colleague asked me where I was. I told her I was sleeping on my bed and trying to figure out what bitch called me at nine.
She laughed into my ear and claimed I had actually made an appointment with her at nine to eat breakfast at the bistro on fifth avenue. Needless to say, I was full of shit, so I hung up and went back to sleep.
I woke up, somewhat more sober at four in the afternoon. Only thing was that I stunk. That smell would have scared away a moldy old racoon.
Moldy old racoon?
Some phrases were certainly bewildering.
Anyway, Roddy took another sip of his water and flipped the documents, trying to find that one story worth finishing, loving the fact that he had written many stories with loose ends. That’s when the idea struck him to put them all together in one story, maybe about an author in search of ... an unfinished story?
On with the search!
Story number seven:
Home.
All he wanted was to go home.
Freddie kneeled down on the wet, soft grass and cried.
Okay, that was short, but somehow the strongest of all the beginnings he had read so far. Who was this Freddie and why was he laying on the grass, crying? What had happened to him to make him feel so lost. Where was he and why was he so far away from home?
Restless, Roddy closed story number seven and opened another unfinished treasure chest.
Story number eight:
It.
What a funny word.
It?
Not it.
The “it” was he ... himself.
A replica, a doppelgänger, an accidental ricochet?
“Who are you?”
No answer.
“Are you ... me?”
The creature nodded, smiling.
Ooh, what a spooky little tale.
That would be worth working on.
Roddy, however was restless.
Story number nine:
“Oil and water, damn it, we’re like oil and water!”
Kent felt weird, walking in his long johns around the block in his neighborhood. That wine bottle dangled in his right hand, the keys somehow stuck into his underwear. He raised the Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon to his lips and took a sip of the wine from the bottle, muttering things about her. Damn it. She really was irritating.
A car passed, a station wagon. And Kent wondered if people inside were thinking what kind of stupid person he was, walking in an old pullover and his long johns through the nightly streets.
“Damn it, she is a pain in the ass!”
Kent’s feelings were in turmoil. Oh, heck. If this were a story, he would have to show and not tell. Hogwash. Damn it. He really was in pain. Pain. Oil and frigging water.
There she sat in front of the computer, screaming at him that mowing the lawn was more than just pushing the damn machine back and forth. He had mowed the lawn, had he not? He had frigging cut the hedge, had he not? One word, one silly little word, that he wanted to practice his music for the audition tomorrow, had been enough. It had not been much. Just a small little word and then the woman had become a tornado. Gee wiz, he had kmown it. Oh, what a stupid situation.
Eventually, he sat there on his big arse tipping at the keys of the computer, his wife in bed, a big bar of chocolate in his belly, damn stupid for a diabetic, and wondering how to write this story. What was he doing wrong? Those voices in his head, what were they?
Oil and water, it boiled down to that, didn’t it?
But not always.
A couple of night beforehand, Kent had been dancing with his wife and she had looked at him in a way that made him melt. Melt. Her strength, his strength.
Roddy remembered that night, the night he had fought with his wife and ended up writing about it, just to get rid of the tension.
He sighed, trying to let go of that emotion by finding another tale that hadn’t been finished. Roddy got lucky,
This was his lucky number ... and it was a story that Roddy decided to finish.
He called story number ten ...
“Rumble”
Somewhere between Little Rock and Callamazzoo, George got that weird, gnawing feeling again. The hunch had been there only a minute or two, lingering inside his dozing body, when he sat up with such zest that his straw hat fell off his head. It tumbled down and rolled back and forth on the rim until it remained motionless. For one moment, George imagined hearing noises in the train wagon. Every crack seemed to indicate that a rat had made itself a nest in here. Every rattle was a sign that a person, even, had arrived. But that was silly, wasn't it? The hunch wasn’t about the wagon, was it? It was who was waiting for him at the next train station.
His hand searched the wooden floor, past straws, splinters and nails, onto the rim of that stolen hat. He grabbed it with two fingers of his right hand, as was his custom, setting it down on the left one, playing with it, running his fingers along the rim, almost without thinking of it. He took long exhaled breaths, shivering to the bone and producing almost inaudible groans.
He paused, remembered, waited, realized what could be, what he had forgotten about his escape and if he could repair what had been destroyed in the first place.
He had no idea how he knew that they were waiting for him. He just did.
“Damn it,” he cursed under his breath, “Rawlins sent his posse on me!”
For a while, George rocked back and forth in a slightly helpless motion, letting the train throw him slightly off balance, his head waddling from side to side like a ball on a stick pushed about by the wind. He listened to the eternal “ka-chunk” of the train and whimpered.
“He’s here.”
He looked out the window past the two horses. The one stallion blocked the left window, but through the other opening he could clearly see the next railway station beyond the curving tracks.
Nobody but Barney had seen him jump into the wagon, right? Nobody except the village idiot, his constant moaning chew, turning his day into a nightmare. In retrospect, Barney’s silly smile and winking, batting eyelids had told him as much. But the mistake was thinking Barney was way too stupid to leave his poppyfield and tell Rawlins, the great Sherriff, that the escaped convict, George, had been seen again. Seeing him stealing the jewelry, getting him jailed. Barney, seeing him escaping, now with nothing but a loaf of bread in his hands and Rawlins snoring behind his desk. Okay, a loaf of bread with a saw in it, but still. George gazed out the window toward the approaching station and wondered if his hunch told him what was true.
So George Taylor stretched his neck far and wide into the empty air and winced, trying to focus on the sandy plain by the building marked Train Station.
He had had these hunches before.
The posse appeared as a speck of dust on the horizon and mutated into three vibrant dots. Three tall men on black horses emerged out of the dark and suddenly made George cringe. It was difficult to say if Rawlins was sneering or not. But it was Rawlins, all right. Hot steaming Hell, Rawlins had crushed his dreams of freedom. On the other hand, Rawlins always sneered, happy or not.
The dot now not only vibrated. It bounced. And yes, the closer the train came to Callamazoo, the clearer did George see that Jared, the hobo, now almost got strangled by the neck-rope, caused by a stallion's pain, Rawlins tugging at the beast's ears, pulling the ropes, the horse's sides attacked by angry heelspikes. Jared had given him a loaf of bread with a sharp saw baked into its middle in the hope of being able to join him out west.
George rushed to the opening of the wagon, panted, saw the steady ritardando of the train, shivered, hoped to jump off at the right time and knew how difficult it would be.
“Too fast,” he whispered under his breath, watching the racing tracks below his vision. Was he going to be able to escape the law now?
“Now or never, George,” he whispered to himself.
Barney. The buggar had been schlepped to the railway station after all. No dream of escaping Arkansas, hiding in the hills and getting back at Rawlins. Getting back? To where? Just bars and Rawlins sneering, damn happy that he might be hitting the homerun after all.
George looked at the approaching posse, the ground, the thrusting stallions. He saw Barney dancing, his spirit obviously overcome with joy over having caught a thief.
"Too damn fast," George repeated to himself.
While wondering how the Sherriff could have caught up with the train so fast, George tumbled out onto a grassy knoll, rolling down a steep hill, trying not to moan, actually moaning like crazy and finally landing in a bush.
The scratches on his skin covered his whole body now, through his cotton shirt and even through his pants.
He tumbled up, fell again, and realized he had bruised, if not sprained, his ankle. Cringing and wincing, he rubbed it repeatedly, wondering if he was going to be able to walk again. Walk? Probably not.
There was a hiss, a hoot and and a clang and the neighing of horses. Closer now. A gallop that approached closer and closer reached his eardrum. Soon enough, George found himself trying to get up, but not being able to.
Then, Rawlins arrived, sighing, shrugging, shaking his head. He cringed as he looked up at Rawlins, sitting on his stallion, flashing his Colt Peacemaker.
“Brother,” Sherriff Rawlins Taylor mused, his drawl too ambivalent to be mean, “the only reason why you ain't in the noose yet is that the law is family. Why you doing this again?”
The Sherriff paused, pushing up his hat with his gun.
George shrugged.
“You were always more popular, Rawlins.”
The stallion shifted from hoof to hoof as Jared was interrogated by the train station.
“Barney saw you.”
George moaned. “Stupid.”
Rawlins pointed the gun at his brother. “Don’t call your brother stupid,” he spat. “We should be happy that he has a job shoeing horses.”
George nodded. “Ma certainly was relieved.”
He looked up at his imposing brother on the horse.
“You got to promise me that you’re gonna treat me nice, though!”
“What do you think will happen if you go back to the farm?” Rawlins cackled.
“Ma will be happy.”
Rawlins opened his dust-ridden mouth, displaying white ivory fang-like teeth.
“She will arrange the best darned barbecue square dance in the whole damn state,” Rawlins sing-songed. “And, hot darned, you will be the main attraction.”
"And Jared?"
"He’s the one that used your own discontent against you,” Rawlins said. “I could have given ya a job at the office,” Rawlins cackled in a jiglike melodious tone. “Instead, ya go robbin’ jewelry stores and stealing hats with a nitwit hobo just to get back at me. And ma loves you just as much as Barney and me. Damn it, you were dumb.”
George looked up, thought for a moment, reviewed the situation. One sunray danced on Rawlins’ hat, came flying over and hit his face. Rawlins and the sunshine. What a silly thought. Then, suddenly, he realized it wasn’t silly at all. It had been the hunch, hadn’t it?
Hadn’t it?
George sighed, looking down, wondering if Jared would be blaming him for being caught.
"Jared takes full responsibility for pulling you into his web of crime," the Sherriff mumbled. "He told us that he wouldn’t mess with the brother of the law no more. Now all you got to do is go back to Ma on the farm and live a good life."
George looked at his sprained ankle.
"What about my sprained ankle?"
George's big brother cocked his head.
"Well, you better be prepared for some home cooking."
In the distance, a coyote howled. It sounded like the lost cries of damned convicts. To which good old George, the prodigal son, did not belong any more. He could feel it. Ma did love him, after all, so crime was not an option. All that had to be happening there was for Jared not to tempt him again.
“What if Jared comes back?”
Rawlins jumped off his horse and helped his brother up.
“Ma has a gun,” Rawlins sneered. “And a prodigal son like you has to work on self-discipline.”
“Self-discipline, huh?”
“New word, hey?”
George looked at his successful brother. For the first time in his life, on that dusty road so close to where he had almost turned into a forever lawless criminal, George wondered if he could become successful, too. Marriage? Kids? Job? Take over the farm? Damn it, one step at a time. A full-throttle gallop from crime to stardom would give any Arkansas do-gooder the goosebumps.
“I’d like to work on the farm, Rawlins. I really would.”
Rawlins smiled. “Ma will like that. She told me you’re her little boy and that she will give you plenty of love and adoration now.”
“She’s never said that to me before,” George stuttered.
“She did now,” Rawlins mused. “You prodigal son, you.”
Riding off toward the sunset, George saw Jared being taken away by the Deputy.
Getting back at Rawlins? How silly that had seemed now. But what if he grew discontent again. Maybe he could start shoeing horses like Barney to relieve himself of pain.
No one had ever disliked him. Not really. He just hadn’t raised his voice, telling Ma to give him a compliment now and then.
Was George going to be a favorite now? Maybe, maybe not. Happy? Yeah, maybe. Even probably. Beans and ham on the terrace, the occasional saloon whiskey. Sitting in the rocking chair on the porch and looking at the sky until dawn and darned well near crying, because God had given him a second chance.
Damn well, second chance?
A farm, one day a wife and kids and a whole lot of Arkansas lovin’, far away from the wild west rumble and ruckus of dirty live stock train wagons.
Hot dog, that sounded nice.
The hunch. He had trusted his hunch.
It had paid off trusting his intuition.
And suddenly, the sunrays that danced on Rawlins’ head also danced on George’s. And he laughed. Rawlins looked behind him toward his brother sitting on the same horse.
“What d’ya laughin’ at, kiddo?”
“I’m laughin’,” George cackled, “’cause I’m happy.”
Rawlins patted his kid bro’ on the knee.
“Happiness never killed anyone,” Rawlins smiled.
And the sun kept shining.
Finally, Roddy was content.
He had found the unfinished tale and made it complete.
He could now go to bed.
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