walter syracuse began his story.
my name is walter syracuse, i have ever been a poet and a dreamer, and my life has been one endless humiliation.
i was born to a bleak landscape. in a remote mountainous area where my direct ancestors had been the first european settlers, but which was now chiefly inhabited by the subhuman descendants of the indentured servants and transported criminals who had accompanied the first gentlefolk to the new land.
my early years were spent in the family “mansion”, now sadly neglected and untended by any servants, and inhabited solely by my ancient and ailing (and, if truth be told, quite mad) grandfather, my mother, and myself.
of my father i was told little. he was a wanderer and a dreamer, what some might derisively describe as a “drifter”, and my poor mother met and married him in what was thought a rather advanced age on her part to do so.
if i did not inherit my propensity to dream from my father, i surely did so from my mother, who spent her entire life wishing to be the inhabitant of long ago, distant golden times and lands.
she was especially entranced by the story of heinrich schliemann and his discovery of the ancient city of troy. she regarded schliemann’s feat, as proof, if any were needed, of the existence of fabulous forgotten empires, of which many more remain to be discovered. consequently it was her dearest wish that i, her weak and ungainly only child, should aspire to be not only a poet but an archeologist. to my childish mind these seemed quite reasonable expectations, no less than if she had wished me to be a doctor or a lawyer.
needless to say, she took it upon herself to educate me, and wished above all to insulate me from contact with the neanderthal children of the village and countryside. the education she gave me emphasized one thing above all else -
that the ancients knew things of which we dare not dream!
and then, that happened of which i had dared not think possible. in a particularly cruel winter, a particularly malignant flu swept through the mountainside, and carried away both my mad grandfather and my beloved mother. it was quickly discovered that my grandfather had died leaving less than nothing - a hopeless morass of debt. the old house and its furnishings were quickly seized and sold to provide some small pittance to the merciless clamoring debtors, and i became that saddest of earthly creatures, a “ward of the state”.
a local farmer was found who was willing to take me in, on the condition that i “earned my keep.” even worse, i was required to enter the local school, with the local primate children.
mrs throckwaite, the schoolmistress, did not take particularly unkindly to me, but did not consider it any part of her duties to protect me from the other children.
on my first day in school, mrs throckwaite asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up. i answered, a poet and an archaeologist.
an arky-what? mrs throckwaite explained to the class as best she could what an archaeologist was, and from that day on i was “arky” and “digger” and “mud boy”. and when i say “from that day on” i mean every day that i was in school.
things were not much better on the farm. farmer drumgold and his wife did not treat me harshly according to their lights, or those of the village, but oh, how my soul did pine!
i resolved to escape. one moonless night, when farmer drumgold and his wife and their chickens were asleep, i stole down to the highway, determined to make my way to the metropolis of kingsville…
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