The Star Fisher Read online

  She took the match he supplied and proceeded to light it. When she sucked in the smoke it felt like a fire had been set in her lungs and she coughed back out the savage smoke as he rubbed her back until she found her breath again. Her face was blue as she looked up into his concerned, ruddy one. He was shaking his head, like a father would to a child who had just done a foolish thing.

  “No ma'am. You are not supposed to inhale it. You are supposed to puff it. That cigar is stronger than a mule. Just puff it, calm and collected like. I'm sorry. I thought you knew that. My dumb fault.”

  She tried again. One puff, two puffs, and by the third puff she had the hang of it and soon they were smiling and puffing and it was true: the cigar did something extra for her. It brought her into the moment and made it better; like a beautiful sunset does. They laughed and smoked and enjoyed the scenery awhile. There could be seen at the bottom of the mountain a beautiful blue pond, the sunlight striking off its surface.

  She finally asked him,

  “So tell me about yourself.”

  He blew a smoke ring into the air and they watched it float across the porch and dissipate. He said,

  “I am just like that smoke ring. Born in a moment, and then the moment is gone. I have lived an exciting life, always traveling from one poetic thought to another. My life began the same way it does for most everybody. It has been told to me that I was born to my mother, but I cannot vouch for that with direct knowledge. I don't remember the first thing about that day. Directly after that I cannot remember much, either. As a matter of historical fact, I have forgotten entirely the first three or so years of my life. At a young age I dedicated myself to growing a mind from the meager brain I had been given. By the age of twenty-one I had devoured, independent of my university education, thousands of books, nearly all of them bought from flea-markets for a nickel a piece. Rare it was for me to pay any more than a nickel back in those days. After this long period of instruction I traveled the world on my father's dime and after that I came back home and settled on becoming a writer.”

  She asked, “When so many others have done and are now doing the same thing, what do you think it is in your personality that would make you care to write obscure works? Why not famous works?”

  He looked at her and laughed, then pointed at the peak of the mountain and said,

  “I've never been to that peak. But I have long walked towards it. . . ”

  He broke the long ash off his cigar and rolled the tip in the tray. He said, “Innate folly, I suppose. So it's lucky I have a great patience with fools, for I have had to live bone-deep with one since my birth. It's like a joke one plays on themselves, you know; this writing thing. But a joke that is not very funny. By the way and for the record, I know only one joke, but I can tell it in a hundred different ways.

  “Anyway, when I was a younger man I was the most idealistic soul you could ever meet and I decided then that I would serve humanity by performing volunteer work for a living, otherwise known as writing. For a very long time it has worked out exactly as my multitude of naysayers said it would.

  “Common saying says the greatest of love is of parent for child. That is not truth. That is just the greatest love most ever rise to. Such love is, in its essence, a selfish love, based on one's own blood and being. It is the propagating of one's self back into the world. The parent and child are connected to one another as if there is no disparity or break between them; blood to blood, eye to eye, soul to soul. It is the strongest of common connections. It is the happiest of loves and not dependent on conditions, but comes ready-made in the parent and child.

  “No ma'am. The greatest of love comes from the being who has been disconnected from life, pushed away from it by outside, malignant forces inherent in the race and nearly destroyed and made next to nothing and yet—still remains in their hearts the greatest of love—love of and for life and dedicated to serving it.

  “Such is the work of saints and angels; the kind that walk the earth and bleed and sweat and toil and know great sorrows. The greatest of love is being injured and nearly destroyed by the race you go on to serve anyway. I have known a few of these. And with my writing I have sought to emulate and write of this kind of thing; to set the story of life and service to life down in obscure works; and to seek in my own person that kind of love that serves life and man best.”

  They sat a long moment, watching the geese fly by on their way south. It was late September, time now for the winds to break in the cooler season. She asked,

  “What kind of people do you like?”

  It seemed the proper answer to ask, after what he had just said. He replied,

  “I like all kinds of people; black, white, red and yellow. They are all the same inside. I like short and tall people and fat and skinny people; these are all the same inside. I like all kinds of people and I make it a habit to find one special thing to like extra about each person I meet and I try to remember that one thing, because it often happens people are inevitably going to end up doing something that makes it easy not to like them.

  “I like women who wear no makeup and who wear flower dresses and I don't judge men who do wear makeup and who also wear flower dresses. I have found that people will be happiest if they can be themselves; if they can be natural. And if society would allow people to be their natural selves, what a wonderful and loving world it would be. But our present state of civilization is set up for much that is not natural and so we get a lot of unnecessary gnashing of teeth and general discord.”

  He reached in the cooler and brought out a beer. After twisting off the top he sipped it like it was a fine wine. When he finished an exclamation of delight slipped his lips and he said,

  “I hated beer when I was a teenager, then my friend talked me into stealing a few of these as we worked the cooler in the little grocery store we stocked at. I had never purloined a thing in my life but he soon talked me into taking a few. I can yet recall the moment when the taste of beer became a wonderful thing for me; it was near the chocolate milk crates next to the frozen chicken thighs. I wasn't a natural thief like he was and he would get so aggravated with me about remembering to throw the empty bottle away. It's the only time in my life I was ever a crook, and I feel bad about it, yet. And of course, I speak of this matter to you in the strictest of confidence.”

  He looked over and she zipped her lips and replied she wouldn't tell a soul.

  He told her to help herself so she reached in and took one. It was cold and wet and she popped the top and perhaps it was the company and the mountain, but it was the most refreshing beer she ever had. She asked,

  “What is your dream? What do you want out of life, on a personal level?”

  He sat back and smiled as he looked over the mountain.

  “My dream is a simple, yet ambitious one: just to live in a dry cabin on a thousand-acre mountain and to have a sturdy horse named Handy and a pretty woman to bring me sandwiches.”

  He looked over and said, “That’s it. Nothing more than that would make me happy as a bug on a dog—or a dog on a bug.”

  They were sitting on the porch of a sturdy, dry cabin; a cabin built upon a thousand-acre mountain. Thirty yards away there were two horses munching on the grass near their paddock. He stood and rubbed his stomach and said,

  “I am famished. Would you like to go in and help me make some sandwiches?”

  She stood and said she would and they went to the kitchen, where he fished out of the ice-box the ham and cheese and she figured out where the plates and bread were. After they prepared the sandwiches they walked back out on the porch and ate.

  When she was done he noticed her face was glowing like a silver dish of pearls so he thought it would be right to tell her how beautiful she was. She set the plate between them, smiled, and walked toward the door. He grabbed her leg as she walked by and said,

  “You don’t fool me. I see right through your beauty to the dark truth, milady. Your real truth is most masculine; your blows mer
ely disguised behind the soft facade of a meek and beautiful gentleness.”

  She smiled demure and as she walked back in threw over her shoulder, “Oh you, you do say the most beautiful things.”

  He laughed and finished his beer. He was watching the mountain when she came back out and said, as she rubbed her belly,

  “Those were the best sandwiches I ever had.”

  He nodded for her to come close and whispered,

  “This might not be very scientific, but I believe the secret to a delicious sandwich are the ingredients put into it.”

  Then he leaned back with a self-satisfied grin, like he had just related the very secret to life.

  And perhaps it was.

  Soon he took up a fresh after-sandwich cigar—one dark, fragrant and pregnant with thought. As the light of the long cigar match lit up his face, then died down, he looked over the mountain and said, “I am the father of lights, the shadow of no turning; in me there is no change.”

  She wondered out-loud what that could mean. He said,

  “I was talking about the mountain. A mountain is a holy place. On a mountain one can discover the best parts of themselves that the world would destroy if they stayed in it too long.”

  He passed her a cigar and as she lit it she said,

  “I am the mother of lights, the shadow of no turning; in me there is no change.”

  And she felt then a sense of eternity from her self-baptism on the sacred mountain. They sat in holy silence for the next half hour, watching as the day's light began to fade and by that, setting shadows upon the mountain that resembled ancient bison and saber-toothed tigers and prehistoric men. As the sun’s light dropped behind the mountain the bison and tigers and ancient men moved with it. He lit the citronella candles along the porch and she broke the silence,

  “Who do you write for?”

  “I write for smart people. And all people are smart, if they seek to be. I write for dumb people. And all of us are dumb at any given time. I sure do not write for the masses, which explains my obscurity. I pander to no pimps. I do not write for the ignorant or the superficial or the bigot. I do not write to be popular or famous. I do not care or wish to be either of those, or anything resembling them. I do not write for the average or the typical or the smiley faces. I do not write for the busy bodies, but against them. I am no shill for the cruelty and ignorance inherent in the human race, which is always passed off as something respectable. I am an iconoclast. I break idols. I break tradition. I cut and make bleed false tongues. I do not write for the shallow. I write for the deep and the thoughtful. And everybody can be that, if they would. I write for the thinkers and feelers and the beingness inside people; that part of them they brush off more often than not; I do not write for Pollyanna and average Joe. I write for rebels. That is all I am: a rebel; against ignorance and hatred and gross stupidity, disguised always as other things. I seek to write of beauty, and try to do it beautifully. I try to write meaning that will reach the soul. Few things we do in our modern society really reach into souls.”

  He stopped to break the ash off his cigar then continued;

  “I think the world can be no more beautiful than each of us alone will decide to be, and I believe each is given their burden of beauty to bear, against what is not beautiful and the choice to bear the burden, or let it down. When I was a young man I wished to break the billion thoughts in my mind into a few million and then break that into the best few hundred-thousand. By working day and night I tried to put the work of a century into a few years efforts. For a three year period in the early days I hardly slept at all. And for the other periods I slept every other day. I was on fire with the wonder of being alive and wished to record it. I finally did it. I had, by fire, burned down the billion into the best. I set those few hundred thousand of long-handed essays in an ammunition box to rest and congeal. Next time I opened them they were a soggy mess. I looked upon my work gone to ruin then closed up the box and set it in the trash. Then I rested awhile and got back to it.

  “I have been the poorest among the poor. But all along I have worked to keep the inner wealth within me. Truth is, I have always felt I had more than most, even having nothing but me. I never gave up the best in me for the worst in some other or in society as a whole. I was never made broken and poor inside by succumbing to any of the bonds of this world of men. I never degraded my soul with the typical desires and needs and so I never withdrew a farthing from the inheritance of the spiritual wealth we are all given at birth.

  “The materially rich will rant and rail and tell you how poor they are, while the servants clean the big boat and the mechanics repair the water skis and the maid polishes the balustrade. There are trips every month to some locale. They all say the same thing and say it so often it is like a broken record: We don’t have any money. It’s just what people do, to keep the riff-raff thinking that. But I think it is because inside, they really are poor. I always spoke the opposite—of how rich I was; for I was rich and had nothing to hide about it. My thought has always been, I am so rich I cannot stand it. I must give some of this great wealth away. . . . And so I have tried to.”

  He stood and said they should get to hiking if they were going to make the last half mile before sunset. She stood and followed him out along the path. His vigorous strides ate up the ground and she asked him if he worked out.

  “I workout to be sexy as possible, but it hasn't worked out that way yet. But I keep at it, because you never know when you might have a breakthrough. Seriously, my hair is receding, lines are forming, muscles fading and my wind is nothing like it used to be. I don't like the entropy that is eating me, so I exercise to keep this foul thing at bay. The exercise is like an offering to the hungry beast of entropy. But it will eat me in the end, same as it has eaten everybody before me.”

  By the time they made it to the peak the sun had set and the first stars were out. The after-glow of the dying day was in the far west. They sat on a boulder at the top and watched the last light fade. When all the stars were out he said,

  “I find the stars at the top of a mountain the most famous of natural portraits for me. There is little I think more famous than this.”

  She said, “Famous. . . . I like that description of stars. Everybody knows them. Everybody has seen them. What about you, personally. Why do you enjoy being obscure? I can tell you do.”

  “That's one of those choices we don't really have the choice to make, isn't it? If people could really make themselves famous on purpose, fame would be so common it would no longer be fame. It is a lucky, or unlucky, thing that none control. For most who have attained fame there are thousands of others who could have done it better, but it didn't work out. I enjoy my obscurity because I enjoy my privacy. I am an extrovert by nature, but an introvert by training. I prefer peace and quiet. I am not shy but am capable of experiencing slight, ancient tremors of shyness, yet when words need to be spoken I have no fear to speak them. So I write the words I am not afraid to speak. I am honest to the core, which does not make for easy living and even less easy to be so and famous, so my obscurity fits perfect. Being famous allows one to make lots of money they haven't really earned, and I wouldn't know what to do about all that; I have never earned a penny I didn't earn honestly and by the sweat of my brow, but I have been given free dollars by charitable friends. And I learned I earned those dollars the most. We are a materialistic society. To give love away for free is a thing preached in sermons every day and hardly ever followed up on but to give away cash is tantamount to treason against god and country.”

  “How did you come to write The Myth of Love?”

  He smiled and shook his head,

  “It took me six years of study and then sixteen years after that to write that book. But I didn't write that book, it wrote itself through me. It came to me in whispers over the years and kept me up many nights. It was writ in wonder. It might always be my proudest work. There's talk about trees in that book. I love trees; they bring me peac
e and wonder. I view them as having a sacred wisdom inherent in them; a patient nobility that if men would contemplate and imitate would make this a better world. There's talk about stars in that book. I love stars and have found it's easiest to view them without a wood and shingle roof above your head. Second best way is to stick your head out the window and look up. I wonder sometimes why people continue building homes without star windows in the roofs. Every home should have a star window. Don't you think? I believe there is talk of grass in that book; I have discovered it's best to enjoy the grass without shoes on your feet. There might be some talk about love in that book, which is best enjoyed without possession. The greatest of loves possess each other by that inalienable right kind of thing; all the others need a certificate. The Myth of Love is the natural man's book on how to be rich. That's how I see it. My soul went through a gestation of wonder for a very long time then gave birth over a long time of all it had experienced. It was a beautiful struggle, the long birth of that book.

  “I believe in humanity and have done what I have to serve it the best way my little means can, but on the other hand, many particular members of this species of life annoy me to no end. It is the wise men I have no patience with, those who know everything. You know the kind, the ones who are never wrong and never apologize, etc. The ones who have all their thought handed to them from the society they live in, the un-originals, which are legion; the judgers who know not they know not. These I have no patience with; these kind make my born shyness go completely away. The Myth of Love is my answer to all of that; at least for me. It's a wild and poetic trip through existence and surely poses more questions than answers. It's about the one thing none of us can do without and if we do go without it, are made the less for it.

  “Beyond the incredible hyperbole of that book I think it is about, in a long, round-about way, the most important lesson we all need to learn: How to fall gracefully. And then, when we do, how to stand back up. That book is the answer for all that, at least for me. In it are life lessons we all can learn better; how to fall gracefully is to fall with balance. How to land is to not panic during the fall and enjoy the ride down as much as possible. And how to stand back up, well we learned that as our very first lesson when we learned how to walk and speak our mother's name. All my little, obscure works are about all of that.”