ISLAY: A NOVEL
Douglass Bullard
Words: 1,636
[Excerpt]

Lyson is insane, she nodded to herself, then stopped herself lest he saw her. But she needn’t have worried; Lyson caught sight of something he didn’t like of himself in the mirror and hurried over and turned on the lights. He blanched. He seized fistfuls of Kleenex and mopped the sweat off his face and neck. He even tried to dry the armpits of his jacket, but it was futile. He slammed the ball of Kleenex at a wastebasket. Seizing a can of deodorant, he let loose a spray against his armpits. Sniffing all over himself, he found new areas of further concern and pushed the button again, raising a cloud of spray between his legs. Never before had Mortima been this intimate with a man and her neck began to feel hot. She imagined her neck sweating and she wiped it, cursing Lyson for the mess he was creating in her person. She caught herself again. The light from the vanity mirror was so bright she felt exposed; she held herself stock stiff, like a deer caught in headlights.

Finally, his face and neck were wiped dry enough to be presentable, and Lyson calmed down somewhat. Now he examined his ears by employing a small mirror held up at such an angle against the big mirror that he could see deeply into his own ears. Out came the Q-tips from a drawer and he reamed his ears so clean that if wax had been the culprit behind his hearing impairment, he would’ve heard Mortima’s gasping perfectly by the time the little mirror satisfied him that his ears were clean down to the drums. An examination of his nostrils brought out some tiny scissors from the drawer and he snipped around inside until all the offending little hairs were gone. His shoulders brushed clear of dandruff, his tie pulled straight, his hands and sleeves wiped clean of chalk, he nodded to some imaginary flunky beside himself: Ready!

With the slowness of a very important man weighed down with the responsibilities of the world, Lyson pushed himself to his feet, a deep thought furrowing his brow; he moved slowly to a position behind the table where he could face both the doll house and himself in the mirror. For a fraction of a moment his brow furrowed ever deeper. His demeanor collapsed and he hurried back to the desk. Out of a drawer he retrieved a matchbox and slid it open. It was no ordinary matchbox, but the kind that formerly held huge wooden matches.

With the tenderness of servant toward master, he brought out a shiny tin soldier. Mortima saw that it was a knight in shining armor astride a horse with–of all things–wings! Over and through the assembled troops on the table he marched and flew the little knight, his lips pursed to emphasize the seriousness and splendor of the occasion. Around, round, and above the doll house, Lyson flew the little knight on the wings of-of–Mortima thought aghast, the Mobile Gasoline Company’s winged horse, banking one way, then sharply like a jet, zipping the other. Mortima had never learned about Pegasus, the winged horse; nor has she learned about the story of how Pegasus came into Lyson’s life, how his grandmother had started it all, how his dream had begun in a matchbox. Had she known the story, she’d have bolted out the door back to the tea party, screaming and wagging her finger. Instead, she gaped at Pegasus and worked her mouth like a fish out of water.

It was his dear grandmother who gave him the matchbox. It was uncanny just how she knew what would please him. For some reason, perhaps because they do not bear any guilt over the child, grandmothers do seem to know their grandchild far better than the parents do.

“Open it,” she urged, wiggling a finger in his dimple. Lyson would have torn open the box but she caught his hands and showed how it could be opened without tearing. Out came a Rolls Royce. A Silver Cloud the size of an ordinary matchbox, yet its four doors opened like the real thing to reveal a steering wheel, seats, even a dashboard; and the bonnet opened to a miniature engine. So real that, even though Lyson had to set his ear on the floor to achieve this end, he could imagine himself driving the automobile around, under chairs and tables that transformed themselves into houses, skyscrapers, mountains.

This Silver Cloud began the great matchbox collection. And so the Dream. Every time she came to visit, his grandmother brought a new automobile. Cadillacs, Lincolns, Mercedes, BMWs, Ferraris, MGs, Bugs, even jeeps. As Lyson grew, so did the matchbox collection: trucks, semitrailers, tractors, bulldozers, tanks, even warships. As the collection grew larger and more extensive, so did the dream. People thought the collection the finest they had ever seen of the matchbox set; Lyson thought his dream the neatest.

Yet the dream remained formless, like stardust, lacking content and substance, until one day his grandmother, the only one he ever confided his dream–at least until Mary caught on years later and pried it out of him–anyway, this selfsame grandmother returned from a trip to Vienna with a genuine matchbox, a large one that formerly held wooden matches. The kind that, when struck, made fire.

“This is very valuable,” she stressed as she held it out of reach of his eager hands. “Be careful!”

“Say thank you,” his mother insisted.

“Promise,” insisted his grandmother, “you’ll be careful.”

She slid the box open and out flew Pegasus, with Lyson close behind. It was a shiny tin knight on a flying horse, the knight so straight and courageous in the saddle, the wings so proud and jaunty. Lyson ran after it, holding it high aloft, little engine noises sputtering on his lips. Around, above, and under the furniture went Lyson and Pegasus, sweeping around tremendous thunderstorms, soaring above mighty mountains, swooping under great bridges. Grandmother screamed and mother seized him by the sideburn and took away Pegasus.

The shiny knight on his Pegasus was put away, never to be seen again, except on two or three occasions under the watchful eye of Grandmother, until Lyson was a grown man, when it was deemed prudent to allow him to be alone with Pegasus.

Mortima never knew any of this as she gaped at Lyson who, with dramatic aerobatics, deposited the little knight inside the doll house. He pranced it about some, allowing the spirited horse to calm down, and turned the little knight to face his troops with a salute. The force of her breathing drew Mortima’s attention to her mouth, and the fact it was wide open to the lights, her teeth sparkling. She shut it.

His demeanor in control, Lyson held up his hands, palms outward to silence whatever tumultuous applause he could see that she couldn’t. For an unseemly time he held this pose, his head bowed in mock humility. It took time, inordinately long it seemed to Mortima, for the applause to die down; Lyson took a deep breath, nodding in recognition of the momentousness of the occasion.

“My friends, wonderful deaf,” his hands came to life, his eyes moving lovingly over the assembled troops, cars, trucks, tanks, bulldozers, warships, and trees. “We here, finally successful-” His eye flickered up at the mirror in admiration at himself but he saw his hair. He abandoned his speech and leapt over to the desk and pulled out a comb.

A clicking on the doorknob nearly made Mortima jump. Her heart pounding in her throat, she kept a finger pressed on the lock button. Somebody on the other side of the door, most likely Mary, tried the knob, sending anxious jerks through the knob into Mortima’s hands. She held on. Not now! Not now!

Lyson combed his hair neat, wiped his face again, and restraightened his tie and jacket. He admired himself for a moment and turned off the lights around the mirror. By this time the knob had given up and Mortima could feel through the floor steps retreating in defeat. Get going, she urged Lyson. Get on the job!

“My friends, wonderful deaf,” Lyson resumed his oration, his hands tracing a florid pattern through the air as would Pegasus fly. “We here, finally succeed, capture Islay, our own island, our own state; deaf only allowed here from now on. Hearing finally pushed-off.” A giggling arose in Mortima, and she tightened her chest to suppress it.

“Many, many years ever since hearing repress us deaf, make us slaves, pat our heads and say be good, think us dumb, mock us”–his hands roared, slashing in the light so that they flashed against the darkness behind, as would attack her enemies Pegasus. His fist slammed the table and some of the soldiers toppled over. Hastily he set them back on their feet and regained his composure. The giggle reached Mortima’s cheeks so that they puffed in and out as she pressed her mouth tightly to prevent its escape.

“My first decision, now me Governor here Islay, our beloved State, myself decide, announce”–he paused for the proper dramatic moment. “All hearing must out before time, 12 Midnight!” Again the pause for effect. “Islay for deaf only. Deaf only allowed here. Hearing can’t enter. Command: block bridges!” His lips resolute, he marched some tin soldiers toward the bridges.

But the bridges had already fallen. His eyes wide with surprise, he stared at the bridges lying on their sides. He had forgotten he’d bulldozed them into the river. He slapped his forehead and stepped back, biting his knuckles.

Mortima could no longer hold back and exploded in that wonderful rolling bouncing laughter of the obese.

Lyson nearly died.

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ISLAY is available for pre-order at http://www.clercscar.com/books/preislay.html

ISLAY: A NOVEL
Douglass Bullard
Words: 1,377
[Excerpt]

There! Lyson was at the blackboard, his back to the door, furiously chalking calculations. Mortima shut the door, her hands behind pushing in the lock button. She remained in the shadows, not daring to move, her back against the door, her hands out of sight on the knob, her eyes unwavering.

On a strange-looking table in the center of the room, filling half the room, stood an enormous doll house illuminated by a conical lamp hung low from the ceiling. Only the table was in direct light; the window was heavily curtained, so that the doll house almost seemed to float in the dim room. It was the fanciest doll house Mortima had ever seen, and it was absurd that a grown man should have such a toy when so many little girls like Mortima had to grow up with cardboard types, if any at all. Mortima gripped the doorknob. A plaything like this!

Yet, it was no ordinary doll house. More like a two-tiered wedding cake, she thought; a silvery conical roof, something like a Chinese coolie’s hat, supported on slender white columns arranged on a round platform and topped by a spire resting on a smaller circle of columns over a round opening in its peak, like a church steeple. No walls. Just Grecian columns. Really a very pretty model, as large as any she’d ever seen.

Before she could complete the thought process leading toward a suspicion that Mary was expecting a new Sulla, Lyson made a quick motion that startled her. He turned without warning to the table and hunched over a large book, his lips puckered and twitching with silent figurings, sweating profusely, the beads shining like crystals on his face. Mortima thought it odd too that he was wearing a business suit, and a tie to boot. The suit was wet under the armpits, and a grimy ring could be seen around the collar of his white shirt. All this sweat reminded Mortima that she had a nose and she started at the pungent male odor at close quarters. It reminded her of musk, but before she could establish an opinion about it, Lyson slapped his head and rushed back to the blackboard, and resumed the figurings, his hands and sleeves dusty with chalk.

The blackboard covered much of the wall to the left. Writing with his right hand, Lyson’s back was turned toward the door as he scribbled, so Mortima was safe for the moment. On the wall opposite Mortima was a window heavily curtained, no doubt, against prying eyes. A cluttered desk sprawled on the right. Her eyes laughed at the huge mirror above it; it was framed by a bank of bare lamp bulbs, like an actress’s dressing room. A vanity mirror! Her mouth opened in a humph but she shut it. The fillings and caps on her teeth might catch the light, and his eye.

Something he had just written on the blackboard thrilled Lyson and he gave a tiny leap, thrusting a fist high in the air. Mortima cringed back against the door, gripping the knob ever tighter. Lyson bounded back to the table and pushed little matchbox automobiles, trucks, earthmoving machines, and tanks closer toward the doll house over roads painted grey over the green of the table, his eyes bright, his lips putt-putting little engine noises. Whoa! A sudden roadblock brought everything to a grinding halt and he bit his knuckle. He consulted the big book, frantically turning the pages and gingerly touching the little cars. He slapped his forehead and went back to the blackboard, shaking his head in chagrin at some gaffe unknown and incomprehensible to Mortima. His damp hand erased some of the figures and chalked in new ones.

His intensity perplexed Mortima as she looked hard at the numbers on the blackboard. Islay–302,074. Pinnacle County–198,862. Suffex–121,483. Sanday County–28,704. Crewe–18,573. Flint County–40,669. Wrexham–22,154. Mortima allowed her mouth to fall open. Islay and Suffex seemed familiar. Something she thought she’d seen on a green sign somewhere, along a freeway to New York. Ah, Islay, a tiny state, she recalled. How come such an interest in such a nothing place? she wondered. A geography freak? Bah! Not much of a scandal.

But then why the locked door and secrecy, she reminded herself. The doll house too. And the vanity mirror. And the sweat and the smell and the fever. She looked harder and in the dim light noticed framed portraits arrayed on either side of the mirror. Abraham Lincoln so grave. Tight-lipped George Washington. Napoleon proud as a peacock. Gandhi in a sheet. Einstein with a halo of unruly white hair. Martin Luther King, Jr., his eyes bearing the sufferings of three centuries. Uncle Sam pointing directly at draft dodgers. John F. Kennedy in PT-109. So true. He was a brave man. Lyndon Johnson in a World War II aviator’s leather helmet and goggles. Ludicrous! Mortima wasn’t impressed in the least with such fancy grandeur.

She stared accusingly at the back of Lyson’s head bobbing as he wrote vigorously on the blackboard, the chalk worn down to one tiny fragment difficult to hold so that it slipped often, making a mess that upset Lyson almost to distraction.

On a shelf by the desk were piled book upon book, horizontally for some reason rather than vertically. That much easier to find a particular title, though, thought Mortima as she strained her eyes to read the titles in the gloom of the room. The Compleat Candidate. Marketing of the President. Strategy and Your Election. Winning the Female Vote. Care and Maintenance of the Gastro-Respiratory Tract. Mortima went over them again and again, intent on recalling them for future reference.

Taking a cautious step toward the doll house, she saw that all the roads led to the apex of an irregular triangle painted green on the table. Tiny plastic trees, columns of tin soldiers, even plastic models of warships! Just like the war rooms she’d seen at the movies! A closet Dr. Strangelove?

Suddenly Lyson was back at the table, full of renewed enthusiasm. The roadblock was broken! He gleefully rolled cars, trucks, bulldozers, tin soldiers, even trees up closer to the edifice, surrounding it in a splendid military procession. The warships sailed up blue ribbons painted on either side of the triangle to the apex, and laid siege to the doll house. Two tanks crashed into each other due to mixed signals between Lyson and his hands. He berated them in the manner of a drill sergeant and set the tanks straight and roaring on their way. With sputtering lips, he bulldozed down a couple of little bridges, isolating the triangle from the outside world across the blue ribbons of rivers. This accomplished, he marched the bulldozers back into formation alongside the tanks and other engines of war. The enemy was taken! He thrust a fist in the air and held it there in triumph. A sigh of tremendous satisfaction, and he dropped his fist slowly, surveying his great victory, his eyes bright and dancing, his face flushed with victory and dripping wet with the passion of battle.

For a long moment everything was still in the room; Lyson, with his chin high, proud, gazing with affection at the beautiful doll house, eyes shiny, chest heaving, while Mortima retreated against the door, her grip hard around the knob. Again the strong male odor startled her and her heart accelerated. His happiness over such trivia was disgusting, even when viewed against all the foibles she knew of the husbands of her friends. He had no right to be so happy while his wife Mary had to contend with the real, oh so real, situations she and her friends were put to every day just so that their husbands could enjoy silly things like toy soldiers. Her lips hurt from having been pulled over her teeth. Lyson’s fault! But she restrained herself; after all it was her skill at her vocation that still was her best, most devastating weapon. And it was a weapon, not some little tin car pulled out of a match box. And she would use it, when the time was right. When it hurt the most!

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ISLAY is available for pre-order at http://www.clercscar.com/books/preislay.html