Cave Writes

Motel

Rupert felt the pull in his diaphragm walk out ahead of him; wait for him to
follow.
Trees pinched the gray gravel stretch at the horizon drop in front. Behind, the
same. A poke of blue sky spread up triangular to a drop of road in the distance, formed
by trees that rose higher as they came nearer. And a gap ahead held the motel. The bus
let him off near enough so that some blue tile roof was just visible between a small split
in the evergreen trees.
Pebble gravel chunks changed undershoe to a worn dirt path as Rupert passed
the trees and entered the clearing: One large circle with one road shot tangential in
acres and acres of nothing but wood. In the further hemisphere, drifting to the right,
rose the motel. In the other, a lake with one small dock shimmered and sunk.
The path wound right to the motel. A large white box with a pediment, porch,
and a blue shingle roof. Jutting from the left was a squatter building with a stick-post
sign that read ‘MOTEL’. To the right on the first and second story ran white walls with
incessed blue doors. Two together, before a large gap and two more. Six pairs for twelve
rooms on each level from the front. Black diamond windows dotted each door at head
height, and one door near the edge on the second story was propped open with black
inside and a gray-white light-shape from some lamp or television screen.
Out and across, the lake was washed in sun. Tall stalk grass stuck up and tucked
underneath the bright dock with one man fishing from a fine green armchair. His pole
pointed to the sun and with the line and the lake formed a right angle which wavered in
the breeze.
Rupert felt the tug in his gut and cut through the ankle grass for the dock.
Slightly raised, he shoe-tapped a plank before stepping on. The man’s head was blocked
by the armchair back. “Tread lightly, son.”
“What are you trying to do?” Rupert eased up.
“Snag some fish.” The line tightened for a moment. The fisher had a tall white
mustache that covered his mouth and a green cap that shaded his brow and eyes.
“What’re you doing here kid?”
A whip-shift fish flop sounded from the lake. “I think that someone here might
be able to help me.”
The cap’s brim shadow shifted lighter as the fisher turned his head. “You’ve got a
problem?”
Rupert was 13. He had straw blonde hair and all of his limbs intact. His clothes
were undamaged. His nails were neatly trimmed. “My gut told me to be here. Are you
staying at the motel?”
“On occasion if it gets cold.” The fisher muffled through his mustache, “Are you
staying?” He brought the line slightly back.
“I just need to look around,” Rupert said uncertainly. “Could I ask you
something?”
“Shoot.”
“Is there anything that you want?”
The fisher laughed. “For a long time. But then I calmed down. ” He nodded
towards the motel, “I learned that you can’t change anyone in life except yourself. In
any way that matters at least.” The fisher performed a simple back and forth flick of the
rod, “Do you know about Buddhism, kid?”
Rupert nodded seriously. Long weeks spent leafing through brittle books. Talk of
reincarnation and the middle way and a life without want. Research for his decision.
“It did the trick for a while. Helped me realize that I won’t get what I want no
matter where I go. At least with what I thought I wanted.” The lake pulled gently. “Hell,
you’ve probably lost me. Y’know, Buddhists aren’t supposed to eat fish.” The line
tugged but relaxed again. More likely wind than a bite. “You can’t help anyone in there.
They’ll moan about every little thing and if you lend them a minute they’ll take an
hour. No balance. Not a one.”
“Then how can I figure out what they want? I need to.” Rupert placed a hand on
his stomach, “By tonight, I think.”
“Pay attention is my advice. People’re always moving towards what they want.
But even if they get there, they’ll find another thing to break their back over.” The line
tugged again, then bent. The fisher didn’t startle but adjusted his hands and rotated the
handle in easy circles. Rupert felt a pull in his diaphragm and left the fisher for the
motel.
Rupert slipped through the main doors, walked close and below the service
window and snuck through two more swinging blue doors into the motel’s lobby. A
finger to his gut, then the air led him to a black door on the left.
“I swear that girl’s gone for two minutes and she looks like she’s lost a fight with
a briar bush.” A woman with a head of spiral black hair sat on a high-chair, pinching a
needle tied to thin thread, turning in and over a large patch in a small pair of faded
jeans.
“Wish I could help.” A short bartender turned a glass over a clean but stringy
white rag. Behind the bar, he stood on a black plastic step stool.
“Wish you could too, Marty.” The woman said sympathetically.
“Howdy fella, what can I get ya’?” Marty turned to Rupert as he pulled himself
onto a high-chair further down.
“I don’t need anything. Would you mind if I asked you a question?”
“Not at-” Marty’s face scrunched up around the nose. In the doorway to the
lobby stood a young girl in pajama pants, clutching a copper-wire birdcage with a
perched blue canary.
The black-haired woman tucked the needle under a loop in the patch. “Jenny,
you don’t need to bring that bird everywhere you go! And could you please clean that
cage? He’s probably smelled nothing but poo for the past month.”
“Brady said not to,” Jenny tended to lean slightly back, as if in disbelief, but her
voice was a frank monotone.
“Brady doesn’t know what’s good for him.”
“Brady said I don’t feed him and you said I feed him too much and I won’t clean
up the poo because Brady gets to eat that and you won’t be mad.”
“Clean that cage!”
The girl ran back into the lobby, cage swinging in tow.
“Well, that’s another fire I’ll have to put out. First is starting dinner.” The mother
smiled tired at Rupert, cinched the knot with a pull on the needle and a snap in the
thread, folded the jeans into a small blue square, nodded “Later Marty,” nodded at
Rupert, minded her back and eased down from the bar stool from which she walked into
the lobby.
Marty watched her leave and absently wiped his forehead with the cloth,
muttered a curse and deftly tossed the cloth into a distant bin, and grabbed an
identically ragged one from beneath the counter. “Now that question?”
Rupert kept sight of the high-traffic doorway for a moment before replying, “If
you could wish for anything, what would it be?”
Marty scooted his stool down before stepping on again in front of Rupert, who
sat with a serious expression. “Really kid?”
Rupert nodded emphatically.
“Well, I was always good with my hands,” Marty’s face fell before his smile
returned in earnest. “Still remember, way before you were probably even born,
Christmas Eve at my Uncle’s. Everyone crowded around the board and I couldn’t make
anything but holes in the plaster. But I kept at it. And the next morning when people
started getting up, the whole family saw me— dead tired— get my first bullseye for
Christmas. Knew it’d be a while before I reached the top but I also knew I didn’t mind
practicing until I was there. Really loved it that much.” Marty put his cloth down, and
then his glass. The bottom rim rumbled and thumped against the table as he lowered it.
“Started tending bars because being a pretty good dart player doesn’t keep you fed.
Already spent so much time in bars anyway. Practicing nine, ten hours everyday. And I
enjoyed it too, knowing I was on my way. Not too many years ago I used to throw from
back here and hit bullseyes. Not often, but a couple of times. And you really don’t want
a drink, kid?”
Rupert said no and Marty removed his hands from the countertop. They wavered
lightly in the open air.
“Got Parkinson’s. Really early. The doctors were amazed and sympathetic. Darts
got harder and when it got worse, anything fancy at the bar got hard too. I still like
some of the ‘less tactile’ parts of the job. Talking to the kind of people that come to a
bar. Seeing them smile into my drinks. But I still try and throw even when my hands
cramp. Still want to get back in the scene more than anything. I don’t think I’ll ever be
able to let it go.”
Rupert said, “Thank you,” and started to stretch towards the floor. He stayed put
as the door swung open once again. The girl with the bird cage had returned, empty
handed.
“Jenny! You alright kiddo?”
Jenny stood for a moment and seemed to note the ceiling. White ceiling tiles.
“Mmhm.” She pointed a commanding finger at a mop leaning against the bar and said,
“That.” She repeated ‘that’, pointing at a metal bucket beside, and finally at Marty,
polishing another glass with his stringy rag.
“This?” He dangled the rag by a stringy piece and it untwined and dropped by
another inch. The girl kept staring and Marty handed her the rag. She tossed it in the
bucket before carrying the ensemble into the lobby.
“Strange as her mother.” Marty turned and saw that Rupert had left.
“And that’s the only way Marty can become happy?” Rupert stood partly cut in
the afternoon shadow of the fisher’s green armchair.
“I find it a shame. No matter how hard he tries, the world has pushed his dream
out of reach. Marty’s stuck, unable to look at anything besides it.” The fisher lodged his
rod into a hard, black plastic hole with a slight lip, likely cut and shoved into the green
armchair. “Kid. What do you think happens when every one of your actions and
perceptions is aimed at a ghost?” The fisher rotated his torso in the chair and Rupert
could only look gravely back. “You might as well be a walking corpse.”
In a halo, arm-length orange ovals swapped spots on the lake surface. “Which
would be better for him?” Rupert asked, “To give up on his dream, or to have another
chance?”
The shadow cast from the fisher’s self-standing pole divided the dock in two
equal portions. “I was able to give it up, mind you. It was hard but I’m happy here:
participating in this little ecosystem. Dreams are fallible. They can be shot down at any
moment no matter how hard you struggle and sometimes there’s nothing solid there to
grab in the first place.”
“But what happens to all of his effort?” The sun was full and bright over the pair
on the dock.
“I’m not sure, kid. Maybe it spreads to the people around him. Maybe it’s the
only thing left holding him up.” The fisher picked his rod back up without much
adjustment.
The lake was incomprehensibly large to Rupert. He knew that the motel rose
behind and felt the tug in his diaphragm that signaled a new place to be. “Thank you.”
The mother stood in front of room #12, at the very end of the lower rooms. She
rapped the door with her fist, repeating “Jenny?” with rapidly rising alarm. Clattering
and scraping metal sounds leaked through the door and the mother struggled in her
pocket for a key ring. After a fumbled jam and recovery she threw the door wide with a
desperate call for her daughter.
Inside were crayon drawings with very fine pen borders in simple frames. Rain
boots and colorful flip flops that overlapped under a shoe rack. A red pan sat unheated
on a gas stove with two loaves of bread on the neighboring counter and some teal
dishes held vertical in a drying rack beside the sink. The smell of freshly baked bread
was present but mostly overpowered by flowery soap and feces. And in the center of the
room Jenny pushed the stringy white rag into a pool of soap suds only spreading on the
wood slat floor around a gleaming orange birdcage and from the top corner of the
yellow-walled room and inside and down and through the doorway flew a blue canary.
“No!” The mother grabbed for the bird, just missing by moments.
Brady’s tail left Jenny’s sight behind her mother’s closed fist raised in the wide
open door. Jenny’s feet slipped in soap but pumped her out of the room and into the
clearing after her mother and her bird who’d blended seamlessly into the sky.
Rupert stood nearby focused on the people before him.
The mother crushed her daughter against her hip. “Oh sweetie. Brady. He’s fine.
Fine! He loves you but imagine all that sky! All for him! Not some little cage but all
that! C’mon baby, we’ll be alright.”
Jenny brought her head up to meet her mother. Brought her shaking hand to her
mouth— passed her tear-stained cheeks— and with great gravity, between her first
molar and her canine, shut her teeth down and into her knuckle. Her mouth formed
around the bleeding puncture and she whispered, “I’ll kill you forever,” and ran back
into room #12.
The horizon seen from the clearing bordered between orange and dark violet and
the mother heaped in on herself beneath the large, dimming sky.
Marty walked out from the porch and seemed to see the scene in history. The
mother in the grass and the too tall sky above her and the open door at the building’s
far end. He almost seemed to reach for her before picking out Rupert by her side. Marty
half-saluted before running to room #12.
Rupert crouched gently before the mother’s crumpled form. “Diane. If you could
have anything at all, what would you wish for?”
Diane sobbed silently in the grass. Piles clotting in grooves where elbows and
knees dug into the earth. Hyperventilation turned into small mutters that gradually
became intelligible. “I try. I try. I try.” Diane pulled herself up and onto her knees,
joints crumpled and stacked and shuddering occasionally. “I try and try and I try. I’m
trying and I can’t ever do it right. And I do everything for her and I love her but
sometimes I feel like I wanna smack her! I’m horrible. I’m fine if she hates me. I’m fine
if she hates me, I just don’t want to make her like me.” She crushed a tear beneath a
knuckle. “I never want her to feel like I do but I want her to try like I do and not fumble
her life away.”
“Thank you.”
The last light shined on the fisher and his pole, forming a right angle with the
line and the lake. Beside his green armchair an ancient waterlogged and algae-dressed
black boot seeped into the wood.
“I’ve learned so much about the people here.” Rupert said, “I’ve seen their
struggles. They act irrationally. They make themselves miserable holding onto dreams
they can’t achieve. They’ll lash out at others when their wants go unanswered. At
people who only want the best for them.” The dock was entirely dark now, apart from a
faint yellow glow shining through Rupert’s shirt and coming from his belly. “Fisherman.
If I could make any one wish come true, what should it be?”
The fisher turned his head, towards Rupert and the motel and the burgeoning
crescent moon. “You can really do it, can’t you?” With some small struggle he rose from
the chair. “You can grant a wish? Like a genie?”
Rupert placed a fist over his stomach.
“I’ve got it. Boy am I glad you came to me because I doubt anyone’s got it better
than me.”
“All I want to know is what you’d wish for.”
Some desperation brought up the fisher’s spine and pushed his legs forward. He
brought his hands before him, clenched and supplicant. “We can’t exist without hurting
each other. All of our needs have been jumbled up and there’s nothing we can do for
each other and we die! Miserable the whole way! Bring us to a time when we knew
nothing but to eat the grass in front of us! When we were dumb and wise enough to eat
our fruit and have our kids and let it all go on without our name scarred on a tree or our
footprint squashing a forest. Please, reduce us to animals!”
The clearing had become harshly cold and the wind rocked the green leaves in
their fastenings. A fish cracked on the surface before submerging again and Rupert
heard a name shouted from the grass behind him.
Rupert turned and watched as Marty stood silhouetted between the motel and
the lake. Diane stood back on the edge of shadow beside the motel porch. In one fist,
Marty held a metal bucket. In the other, a copper-wire birdcage. Marty placed the
birdcage on the black grass before hefting the bucket up with quaking hands. With a dip
before one great upward-heave, a dense cloud of bread crumbs shot from the bucket
and into the night sky. Marty trotted circles in the grass, calling, “Brady!”
Intermittently bending to toss the fallen lumps skyward again. Diane ran her best,
joining Marty in the middle and calling, “Brady!”
They bent and called and panted. They tripped and recovered and ran circles
with no light but a slim moon to stumble under.
And Rupert watched over the pair in the clearing and gave his thanks with one
hand to his belly that moved to his heart. He closed his eyes and looked to the sky and
made a wish come true.