Artie Leaves Home

With a sharp clatter, a pair of horn rimmed glasses, buffed with time and use, falls to the cool linoleum floor. Their owner follows, dropping to his knees before falling onto his left side, curling into a fetal position. His left hand flies to his temple to inspect a new, freely bleeding gash; his right clenching into a fist, stifling a scream with an oft scarred knuckle.

The cane continues to fly. Once, the blows were restrained, dealt by a mind still capable of understanding the fragility of youth, cloudy but not yet murky. Now older, Artie is spared little. The cane she swings is not one of those sissy carbon-fiber walking sticks, made light and versatile by new-age tech. Imogene is no sissy. Wielding a thick maple cane gleaming with varnish, she strikes again and again. Dementia may have stolen her mind, and osteoporosis may have slowly sapped her strength, yet over the years as her body shriveled, her beatings only increased in ferocity.

A child of the Depression, with dust from her family's long abandoned Mid-Western farm still lingering in the deep grooves of her skin, Imogene was resilient; toughened by hunger and strife. Scraping out a living hawking skin on the streets of Los Angeles, she raised a single daughter, fathered by some careless wanderer who had paid his price, and walked on. The bastard daughter, a glowing young thing she named Clara, grew up and had herself a bastard son. Dying after having barely held him, Artie was left to his grandmother. Though she gave him a home, Artie was never loved. As they aged, the boy approaching vitality, and his guardian clasping desperately to its receding fingers, her resentment for him grew as well.

As if the Silly-Putty of time was suddenly stretched and kneaded by a divine child, Artie, cowering, his arm a national forest of mountainous welts and freshwater bruises, he sees in slow motion as Imogene pulls back the cane, gasps, clutches her chest, and falls forward, her face colliding with the floor in a brutish thunderclap. Artie crawls forward, shocked. He prods her shoulder before turning her over onto her back. Her face now a rotten tomato hurled at a brick wall, Artie shoots to his feet, and runs out of the apartment and onto the street, hollering for help. Though a cruel woman, she had raised him nonetheless. But nothing could be done.

There was no funeral.

Already a young man, Artie had fallen through the cracks of establishment, and was left to his own devices. Her only family; Artie was left Imogene's meager possessions. Among these were a small stack of yellowed photographs. In one of them Artie recognized a woman he knew as his mother, and his grandmother. Both, side by side, were bearing genuine, if awkward smiles. The women were in front of a large lake, bordered by tall pines. The photograph was neatly captioned Crater Lake, OR. Having lived in the crowded slums of LA all his life, the clear water of the lake seemed to draw Artie in. Studying the photo, he could smell spicy pine needles, could taste the pure water behind his relatives, could feel the dirt below their feet and see the unadulterated sky above. With the small sum of his late grandmother's money in his pocket, and no happy memories to keep him in the city, Artie made for Crater Lake.

Without his grandmother's gnarled grip on his shoulder, Artie walked freely through the city. Shadowless, he hailed a cab and watched the thick of the concrete jungle give way to a turbulent highway, a hulking beast choked with mechanical music. Arriving at the LAX terminal, Artie bought a ticket on the next flight to Portland, and was shortly on his way.

To fly is a marvelous thing. Having never been in an airplane before, Artie was stupefied by its sheer power. He grasped the armrests and stared out of the window in amazement as hundreds of tons of metal began to lumber beneath him. Slowly at first, the inertia built up until the plane's groans had modulated into a steady roar, careening down the runway. Suddenly thrown backwards into his seat, the rumbling below him has quelled to a dull ache, and Artie sees the earth gradually pulling away beneath him. People fade into fleshy dots, buildings and streets fade into grey and black carapaces. For the first time in his life, he feels free, tethered to nothing. He pulls the photo out of his pocket, and stares longingly at the open air behind his mother, her eyes glinting with life. Folding it up again, he spends the rest of the flight with his forehead pressed against the window, mesmerized by the passing clouds.

The plane touches down with a terrifying series of bumps and scrapes, but to Artie's surprise nobody is hurt. With his heart risen to his throat, pounding like a woodpecker on his budding Adam's apple, he navigates the chaos of the airport, finding himself first on an Amtrak to Chemult, before taking another cab to the base of the trailhead.

Scrawny and underfed, Artie is ill-prepared for the hike, but feels himself guided by some unknown strength. Switchbacking along, he is soon exhausted, his senses overwhelmed by the scents of earth and fresh life. The sun beats down upon his back, and his throat cries for water, but still he presses forward, filthy and aching; eventually arriving at a gap in the trees, framing the majesty of the lake beyond. He takes a few tentative steps forward, consulting the photograph in his pocket. Now grimed with sweat, it confirms that he stands where his mother and grandmother had stood years ago. Stumbling, he runs to the water and kneels at its rocky bank. He drinks, wildly and unabashedly, overcome by emotion and thirst. Having drunk his fill, he rapidly gets to his feet before falling prostrate into the water, dead.