A Child of a Lesser God

The full moon had formed over Thing’s cave 12 times when he decided that enough was enough.

He now realised that his mother and father were not coming back home.Where ever they were, he hoped with all his heart that they were happy. That night, Thing sat at the mouth of his cave and thought about all the stuff that concerned him.

He needed to get a job since the money and tokens his parents had left in the cave were just about to run out. Thing had done okay at school, especially with counting and numbers. Perhaps he could get a job in the town’s bank. When Thing awoke the next morning, he found himself still sitting at the mouth of the cave. He got washed and made his way down the mountainside, crossing the main street and into town.

Thing was used to people staring just because he was different. People didn’t like difference, it frightened them, and frightened people didn’t always behave rationally.
He loved life, and he loved the town where he had gone to school and where he had found (and sometimes lost) friends.

He went to the employment agency to see what job were available. Thing didn’t notice as he entered the office that everyone stopped and stared. Thing wasn’t the first of his kind who have lived in the town. There had been Thing’s grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and of course, his parents.

All of his family had gone to the northlands where many of the Things had formed a colony. His parents would have gone there too, was it not for the fact that his mother had taken ill and gone to the hospital. The last words his father had said to him was that he was just popping out to see his mother.

Neither of them returned, although Thing had spent many sleepless nights waiting and wondering.
He had many good friends in school and some enemies but that wasn’t any different from anyone else. Children learn either love or hate very early in life and rarely do they forget.

The one brave soul in the employment agency asked Thing how he was doing.
“Fine,” said Thing. “Very fine, indeed.”

Thing told the person that he was good at numbers and counting. The agency manager went through many cards, saying ‘no’, ‘no’, ‘no’ to most of them. Then he pulled out a card and exclaimed ‘a-ha’.

The job was at a café near Thing’s old school. He’d remembered the owner being a kind elderly gentleman. As was requested on the card, Thing popped along to the café for an interview. The café owner remembered when Thing’s parents had held a birthday party for him in the café. He was happy to give Thing a job and he was able to start immediately.

The following morning Thing almost skipped all the way to work, given that it was such a nice morning and the fact that he enjoyed being at the café. He had company there and people who would talk with him.

In the middle of the morning, a middle-aged man came in and when he saw Thing, the man said ‘he didn’t want no dirty animal serving him and he expected a human to give him a cup of coffee’.

When the owner told the customer that Thing was his new server and that was that, the man said he would be taking his business elsewhere.

The café owner thought that would be the end of it but it wasn’t. By the time he was ready to shut the café, the middle-aged man was standing outside with several others of his kind and all of them had flaming torches.

“If you don’t put a human behind the counter, then we are going to burn the place down.”

Thing told the old man that he was sorry, it was all his fault, and that he wouldn’t return to the café the following day - but the old man just shook his head and said ‘nonsense’.

Then the owner went outside and faced the gang of men intent on burning down his café.
“You men, think that because Thing looks different that he deserves to be treated differently. In fact to be treated as a lesser being that you. Is he a child of a lesser god? I don’t think so. How many of you created yourselves?  How many of you brought yourselves to Earth? None of you? I didn’t think so. We  are all in this living together, and all we can do is live together. It is you with your black hearts and thoughts which are different from the rest of us.
The problem is you hide your evil thoughts in a body and brain that looks like everyone else. But you are not like everyone else. You are evil and most of all, stupid. So burn my café down if you want. We will only set up in another place, and yes, Thing will be there too. You people are what is wrong with the world, not Thing, not me.”

And with that, the men, one by one, threw down their torches and wandered off. The middle-aged man came forward and spat at Thing. The café owner wiped the spit from Thing and apologised to him.

“I cannot make an excuse for such a person. They are what they are, and we must exist beside them.
Now you go home, have a rest and I will see you tomorrow. We have living to do.”

bobby stevenson 2020

Woodrow

Here’s the strange thing, no one was ever really sure when Woodrow moved to the village. You must remember him? He lived in that little cottage at the top of Mill Lane. His lounge window faced on to the High Street and was always full of jolly trinkets.

You see if you asked a neighbour when they remember Woodrow coming here, they’d say – ‘Oh, he’s always lived here’, and someone else might have uttered – ‘I think he moved to Mill Lane last Christmas or was it last month?’.

It’s not as if he was a mysterious soul, far from it. He was always the life and soul of every party. And if you looked back at photographs, he would be there.

Everyone had a Woodrow story, and every one of them was as different as they were strange. 

I’ve got two stories concerning the man. The first was probably around the time of the great storm. Some trees had blown over every way a person turned. It had been the storm to end all storms, at least that’s what the little man in the grey suit had told viewers on the television.

Mrs Hathaway had been walking her dog, Silver when the first of the gusts had hit the village. The wind had spooked Silver, and the lady found herself chasing her beloved friend through the trees behind the Cross. She had just turned into a dark part of the woods when a small oak fell in front of her and had caused a break in her arm. Now it wasn’t just the pain; it was also the fact that her bone was sticking out at a funny angle.

Woodrow had heard her cries which had been carried by the wind. He had run up from his house to see who was in trouble. There in front of him was Mrs Hathaway lying almost face down in the mud.  And that was the way I found the two of them, with Woodrow trying, in the most gentlest of ways, to ease the lady into a less painful position.

“We’ve all seen the wrong end of problems,” he’d say. “There ain’t no one in this world who doesn’t have concerns. But it’s how we deal with them. That’s what’s important. That’s what makes you who you are.”

Woodrow was my pal, and my mentor and my everything at the time, I was barely ten, and I guessed he was so old that he had probably been to school with God.

I asked him once how old he really was, and he just chuckled some and said he was just a gnat’s hair older than his teeth.  Then he’d laugh so hard and loud and long that I could hear his tummy rumble, and which point he’d say, ‘well…excuse me, little one’.

Woodrow carried Mrs Hathaway all the way down the hill, took her to her house and then fetched the doctor on the High Street. They were friends forever after that night.
“All we need to do is lend a helping hand now and again.”
Woodrow wasn’t wrong.

The second story was perhaps a little more strange. Woodrow had a box on top of his fireplace and he seemed to polish and care for that thing as if it was his child.

In the same year as the great storm, my Grandad passed on. I went up to the Cross by the hill and sat. I guess I started talking to my Grandad – I knew wherever he was, he’d be listening.

It was right then that Woodrow found me. He said we should get down off the hills as it was going to rain heavy. It started just as we got into Woodrow’s house. 

My big pal went over to that special box of his, and he seemed to put something in a little box and then he handed it to me.
“Take this little one. Keep it safe. It’s a small bit of the magic that I keep in that box over there.”

I asked Woodrow what in it and all he said was, “It’s a little piece of hope. That’ll see you through all the bad years. Don’t look inside. Never look inside, or else it’ll fly away.”

You’re going to say I’m crazy but I kept that little box with me all my life. When I was at college, or in a job, or my proposal of marriage – and especially the birth of my child. Every time I needed a little piece of magic, I’d hold that little box and wish for the best.

When Woodrow finally gave up the ghost, I went back to that special little village. His family said that he had left something for me. Guess what? It was the big box from the fireplace.

I went up the hill to talk to Woodrow because I knew he’d be listening just like my Grandad. I’m sure I heard him say to open the magic box. So I did and guess what was in it? Nothing. It was empty.

I smiled. I also opened the little box which had been with me all my life. It was empty too. What Woodrow had given me was hope and belief in myself and my life.

No bigger gift than that. Thank you Woodrow.  Thank you kindly.

bobby stevenson 2020

3000 Miles of Heaven to Woodstock

They had first gone there when the world was a more complicated place, and their lives were just plain and simple. Everything they wanted or needed seemed easier to get back then.

They had married in a small church in Big Indian, a town snuggled in the beautiful Catskill Mountains. When Tony had suggested that they go on a honeymoon, he had been thinking more of the Poconos - not the journey that Helen had suggested: to ride a Trailways’ bus from New York, to Chicago and then on to Los Angeles.

This was the 1970s, and cheap flights were a thing for future times. As for going by train, well the American rail system had seen better days. So the bus seemed the best solution - it was cheap, even if it was going to take them three days – not that it mattered, they were on honeymoon. That was enough.

They had managed to have forty-eight glorious hours on the West coast before it was time to return. They had sat on the beach on their second night there and promised themselves they would return one day. No matter what.

Within a week of them arriving back home, Tony was on his way to Vietnam. It had been the reason they had married so soon and so quickly. Tony had picked a low number in the college draft and was told to report for training immediately.

There were no two ways about it – war had changed Tony as it had for many young men and women over the years. Tony had seen and felt many things that would stay unreported in a lonely area of his brain, only to be taken out and re-lived when Helen was fast asleep and he could shed a few quiet tears.

He had seen buddies, ones who had told Tony of the lives they were going to have when they got back to Philly, or San Fran or a million other towns and cities, and yet Tony had seen many of those guys return in body bags.

So one night before they faced the Vietcong in a final push upstream, Tony promised himself that if he managed to make it back home, then he and Helen would move out West and make a life there.
And they had.

Tony had got employment with a big computer company, and it had given them a comfortable life in California. They had raised three kids, two girls and a boy, and each of them had married and had given Tony and Helen a total of ten grandchildren.

Their boy had joined the army and had been stationed overseas. The two girls had moved to the north, one to San Jose, and the other to Sacramento.

When the doctor told Helen about the spread of the disease, he had advised her to put all those important things in her life, in order. One was to tell Tony – something that had taken her almost seven days to get around to doing. Helen felt that there would be life before the illness and life after – and when the story came out nothing would ever be the same again.

Tony didn’t cry when he heard the news; instead he just picked up the basketball that would always lie out in the yard and he shot a few hoops. When Helen took to her bed that evening, he went to the chair on the back porch – one he kept for all the private thoughts in his head – and he wept – he cried for Helen, for his buddies, and in some ways for himself.

In the morning, he tried to shine as bright as the California sun, but for those who knew Tony, they would have seen that his eyes were a little duller.

They spent the next couple of days living as if the news had never broken between the two of them, but every time Helen looked away at something, Tony would try and drink in her face, and smell and laughter, and try to keep them locked in his head for the cold days that lay ahead when she would no longer be around.

It was on the following Saturday that Tony suggested they have another honeymoon and asked Helen where they should go.
“Home,” she said.
“But you are home,” Tony had replied.
“No, back to the Catskills. I want to watch the sun going down behind Overlook Mountain,” then she smiled at him and his heart broke.

She didn’t want to fly, the trains were still troublesome, and she felt that maybe the bus would be too difficult to ride, what with her illness and all. So she suggested they drive back home along the route the Trailways bus had taken them to LA all those years before.

“We can just take our time,” she told Tony.  They both knew she wasn’t coming back from the Catskills - that would be the end of the road.

Tony closed up their home - he would decide what to do with it later, that kind of thinking was for another time.

Helen packed all the clothes she needed and by the Monday morning they set off to drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Tony got them a room in one of the smartest hotels in Vegas and that night, Helen went down and gambled for the first and last time in her life. She started with a hundred bucks and by the time she had played cards and roulette, she was three hundred dollars up. She put a hundred bucks in a charity box and with the two hundred other, she bought a couple of bottles of good champagne. She and Tony sat by the window the whole night and watched the sun come up over the desert. Neither of them spoke, they just drank and watched the wonders of the world, and then fell asleep.

In the old days, the bus would have gone straight to Cedar City, but instead, Helen asked Tony to take her on a detour to Flagstaff and then on to the Grand Canyon. It had always been on her bucket list and what with the kids and her job, they had never found the time.

The sight was breathtaking – literally – she almost choked at the wonder of the Canyon, then Helen took a deep intake of air and shouted, ‘I love you, Tony with all my heart and soul’ at the top of her voice. A couple next to them applauded her and she smiled back.

It was another day or so before they made Salt Lake City. They checked into a motel and then went for a walk. On Sycamore Avenue, Helen led Tony by the hand to one of those burger joints. It had been years since she had taken the kids to one of those places. Helen and Tony had the biggest burgers with fries and cheese, and when they finished, Helen cleared away the trash and hopped up on the table. She asked Tony to join her – and when they were both on the top, she started to dance and Tony quickly joined in.

“I’ve seen it in the movies,” she told Tony. “And I always wanted to do it.”
On the morning they crossed into Wyoming, the sky was azure blue and the wind was fresh. It was one of those days when Helen wanted to hold on to life until the end of time, itself.

In Laramie, Tony arranged for Helen and him to go riding. She’d been on horses as a kid but had lost her way somewhere down the line. It was the greatest feeling in the world, riding horseback and she and Tony felt like they were very first cowboys. Why had she left it so long?

In Cheyenne, they had gone skinny dipping in the motel pool and when the manager told them there had been complaints, Helen walked naked from the pool back to her room. In the room, Helen and Tony laughed until their sides were almost bursting.

A couple of days later they made Omaha, Nebraska, and at the bar, that evening, the two of them pretended that they were strangers to each other, ones who had just met for the very first time. A tall man with a strange eye tried to pick up Helen that night, which flattered her and annoyed Tony – a little.

They reached the Windy City, Chicago, a day or so later. Helen wanted to go to the top of the Sears Tower, but the following morning she was so ill that Tony had taken her to hospital.

She wasn’t getting any better and the doctor advised her to take several days rest, and then to fly back to New York. That night Helen asked Tony to take her out of the hospital (regardless of the doctors). So Tony dressed up in a white coat, put Helen in a wheelchair, and pushed her right out of the building. The two of them felt like kids again.

They drove around Lake Eire. It had always been a special place for Helen as a child. On vacation, her grandparents and parents would rent a little cabin near the lake. She asked Tony to drive her to the cabin, but it wasn’t there anymore, it had been replaced by a large hotel and some cheap-looking houses.

They stayed the night in the hotel which was someway between Cleveland and Eire, and she sat watching the dawn while Tony was still asleep. It was the same view she had sat watching in her grandmother’s arms all those years before. 

She didn’t feel so good but kept it hidden all through breakfast. It was just as they were heading into New York State that she asked Tony to hurry the journey up. She felt that there wasn’t so much time.

When they drove through the woods of the Catskills, she let out a sigh. She had been waiting for years to exhale this way.  Helen rolled down the window and breathed in a large fix of her cherished mountain air.

This was the place that had made her, and this was the land that would see her at rest. She had made it at last.
She was home.

bobby stevenson 2020

Time Flies

One morning when Olivia was still half asleep, she heard her Grandma talking to her Grandpa all about things that fly. At least she thought that was what they were talking about because the last thing she heard her Grandpa say was,

“…It’s funny how time flies.”

Then Grandpa headed out the door hollerin’ and laughin’ to himself, so hard that he was sneezing all the way down the path.

“Serves the old goat right,” said Grandma.

“It sure does,” said Olivia without any real idea what she was talking about.

Olivia had made a note to herself that when she got to school, she’d ask her teacher about Time and why it flew about the place. However, she didn’t reckon on meeting with Smiling Joe, first. This was the boy who knew everything about everything and all the rest there was to know.

“Can I walk with you to school, Missy?” Asked Joe.

“Sure,” said Olivia, who secretly liked Joe. “Whatcha been doing?”

“Down the creek, Missy, trying to catch me a big old fella’ by the name of Captain.”

As well as knowing everything about everything, Joe was also the best fisherman this side of the Hill. Well, that was according to Joe, at least.

Olivia looked around but couldn’t see any fish.

“Heck, I’m savin’ catchin’ the Captain for another day.” Then Joe whistled a little tune that Olivia liked, and they walked on to school together.

“Joe, can I ask you a question?” Asked Olivia.

“If I don’t know the answer then it ain’t worth knowing,” said Joe, kinda confidently.

So Olivia asked him if Time really did fly and Joe told her that it surely did and if you sat on the Old Creek Road, the one that led out of town……

“….And were real patient, then eventually you’d see Time flying past you real fast.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” 

Olivia was pleased with that answer and started to whistle Joe’s little tune as they walked on to school together. The end of the week couldn’t come fast enough for Olivia and so, on Saturday around lunchtime, she headed down to the Old Creek Road and sat down and waited on Time flying past her.

An hour passed, except it seemed like forever to Olivia - when suddenly Herbert, the dog from Asker’s Farm, came wandering along the road.

“What cha doing?” Asked Herbert.

“Ain’t it obvious, I’m waiting on Time flying past,” said a very important Olivia.

“You are? It does?” Asked a bewildered Herbert. “Then mind if I wait too?”

“Don’t mind if you do,” said Olivia.

So Herbert sat beside Olivia, really excited about the arrival of Time.

While they were waiting, Herbert and Olivia talked about this and that, for Olivia knew a lot about this and that. They were having a real good time when Scrimpy The Ass, from the next town over, also happened to be walking past.

“What cha doing?” Asked Scrimpy The Ass.

“Why we’re waiting on Time flying past.”

“Well I never,” exclaimed Scrimpy. “Mind if I join you guys?”

And both Olivia and Herbert said they’d be delighted if Scrimpy joined them. So Scrimpy sat down and waited.

The whole time the three of them were talking about this and that, since it seemed Scrimpy was quite knowledgeable about this and that as well.

The afternoon grew old, and it was time to go home, and since Olivia had had such a great time with her new pals, Herbert and Scrimpy, she’d forgotten about waiting for Time to fly.

“Perhaps we can do this again next Saturday?” Asked Herbert.

And they all agreed that it sounded like a great plan and so that is what they did. 

bobby stevenson 2020