Grissom stood up from his many-times-repaired stool at the window, hitched up the rear of his heavily-stained moleskin
breeches and prepared for his trek to the freshwater stream across the bay. The huge sullen man was alone again and
without the nameless dog that lodged with him here in the only place he could've ever called a home, it was a time when
that skulking beetle called Alice in his brain would commence with its seductive scampering and bewitching pitches.
When the Wolf-Dog was around, that scurrilous insect rarely whispered its beguile and Grissom's daily chores would be
visited by merely a faint enticing echo and nothing more than a fleeting gasping note at times. But when the stony path
rose from Alkali Bight, the hulking middle-aged man knew the bug of temptation would skitter out of the shadows in his
mind and begin its song of allurement once more.
It had been a long road from his time at Finnegan's Store. Grissom had grown up believing the stoic bald man in the apron
was his father and drunken woman who occasionally vented her intoxicated hatred of getting old, had -on one of the scant
moments away from the jug, somehow disgorged him into the world and set the wide-shouldered youngster onto his path
of drudgery. For the quickly-growing boy, his parents had always seemed distant and not having the standard in-house
schooling from the silent man and his eternally-stewed wife, Grissom had turned inwards and with this act, brought any
chance of intellectually furthering himself to a halt.
A life of lifting boxes in the back room of Kersham's only dry goods store and then sweeping it hadn't really afforded the
growing young inerudite lad an opportunity to learn much of the outside world. There was a day of mundane toil and there
was a night where dreams offered stunted versions of a reality imprisoned in the Store. Grissom took his environment as
it was, daily work, silence at the dinner table and sleep on a cot beside his broom.
Yet it was that one bright sunny morning when he'd been noticed by a curious girl in a calico dress as he tossed the eternal
debris perpetually found in an establishment that sold produce down into the small heavily-wooded gully at the rear of the
shop. If Grissom had retained any of the natural mental and emotional state most teenagers machete through at his age,
his very core would've be focused on the simple fact a young female had singled him out. In the world of the adolescent,
there's a special feeling that that we all crave for in our later years.
However, that stomach-tingling emotion of simply talking to a girl never arrived for Grissom as she approached the taller
figure in the dishevelled clothes and asked him what he was doing. With an empty wooden crate in his arms, he'd merely
stared back at her without any affirmation that he'd heard Alice's light-hearted query or that she required any formal synergy.
Repeating her question in a friendly tone and introducing herself, the girl with braided pigtails of shining wheat studied the
big statue of a lad and audaciously closed the space between them. Grissom merely eyed the visitor to Jacob Finnegan's
backyard without any of the usual cerebration that most young men undertook when confronted with a fairly-pretty damsel
of similar generation.
"Is there something wrong with you?" Alice asked with a light hint of anxiousness and again, the target of her cheerful
challenge remained silent. Displaying her best 'oh-well-never-mind'-smile, the effervescent girl stood before the muted
giant slowly placing the battered trash-box onto the dusty ground and surveying the top of the young man's head, absently
wondered who cut his hair.
Returning to his full height, whatever may have remained of the boilerplate-level of humanity that we all believe dwells
within a fair society, fled with its bags fully-packed and during his future wanderings, Grissom would occasionally visit the
memory of that day and struggle to understand why he did what he did under that cloudless sky and in that deserted yard
so long ago.
As the summer sun had reached its summit and reminded the boy -who'd been left on Finnegan's doorstep when he had
been nought-but a baby, that food became available at this time of the day, Grissom had covered the lifeless body of Alice
with the unwanted rubbish of the place he called home and climbed back out of the arboraceous culvert.
You see, he was hungry.
..................................................
Even the crunching sounds of the wet settling stones of the causeway failed to abrogate the beetle's repining voice in his
head and as Grissom dolefully carried the two large empty pails across the narrow aisle dividing Alkali Bight, the question
reverberated once more. To his left, dark shapes squirmed in the shallow waters and just like the slimy Horse-eels that
revel in the trifling tidal changes, the wriggling bug called Alice haunted his own kind of mental anchorage. Grissom now
ceded that he'd he'd violated a universal standard, a pact that forbids such behaviour.
But -he'd sometimes offer to the buzzing utterance in his head, it was merely a societal-contract he hadn't understood at
the time. So was it the Finnegans' fault or a dark unknown inheritance from a woman who laid a sleeping baby on a doorstep?
Who can say.
Reaching the shore of the mainland and aiming his slovenly gait towards the little stream among the Mangle trees, Grissom
somehow took a strange type of solace that Ma Vittie had never asked that question currently quarrying in the godforsaken
void above his dull eyes. "Is there something wrong with you?"
breeches and prepared for his trek to the freshwater stream across the bay. The huge sullen man was alone again and
without the nameless dog that lodged with him here in the only place he could've ever called a home, it was a time when
that skulking beetle called Alice in his brain would commence with its seductive scampering and bewitching pitches.
When the Wolf-Dog was around, that scurrilous insect rarely whispered its beguile and Grissom's daily chores would be
visited by merely a faint enticing echo and nothing more than a fleeting gasping note at times. But when the stony path
rose from Alkali Bight, the hulking middle-aged man knew the bug of temptation would skitter out of the shadows in his
mind and begin its song of allurement once more.
It had been a long road from his time at Finnegan's Store. Grissom had grown up believing the stoic bald man in the apron
was his father and drunken woman who occasionally vented her intoxicated hatred of getting old, had -on one of the scant
moments away from the jug, somehow disgorged him into the world and set the wide-shouldered youngster onto his path
of drudgery. For the quickly-growing boy, his parents had always seemed distant and not having the standard in-house
schooling from the silent man and his eternally-stewed wife, Grissom had turned inwards and with this act, brought any
chance of intellectually furthering himself to a halt.
A life of lifting boxes in the back room of Kersham's only dry goods store and then sweeping it hadn't really afforded the
growing young inerudite lad an opportunity to learn much of the outside world. There was a day of mundane toil and there
was a night where dreams offered stunted versions of a reality imprisoned in the Store. Grissom took his environment as
it was, daily work, silence at the dinner table and sleep on a cot beside his broom.
Yet it was that one bright sunny morning when he'd been noticed by a curious girl in a calico dress as he tossed the eternal
debris perpetually found in an establishment that sold produce down into the small heavily-wooded gully at the rear of the
shop. If Grissom had retained any of the natural mental and emotional state most teenagers machete through at his age,
his very core would've be focused on the simple fact a young female had singled him out. In the world of the adolescent,
there's a special feeling that that we all crave for in our later years.
However, that stomach-tingling emotion of simply talking to a girl never arrived for Grissom as she approached the taller
figure in the dishevelled clothes and asked him what he was doing. With an empty wooden crate in his arms, he'd merely
stared back at her without any affirmation that he'd heard Alice's light-hearted query or that she required any formal synergy.
Repeating her question in a friendly tone and introducing herself, the girl with braided pigtails of shining wheat studied the
big statue of a lad and audaciously closed the space between them. Grissom merely eyed the visitor to Jacob Finnegan's
backyard without any of the usual cerebration that most young men undertook when confronted with a fairly-pretty damsel
of similar generation.
"Is there something wrong with you?" Alice asked with a light hint of anxiousness and again, the target of her cheerful
challenge remained silent. Displaying her best 'oh-well-never-mind'-smile, the effervescent girl stood before the muted
giant slowly placing the battered trash-box onto the dusty ground and surveying the top of the young man's head, absently
wondered who cut his hair.
Returning to his full height, whatever may have remained of the boilerplate-level of humanity that we all believe dwells
within a fair society, fled with its bags fully-packed and during his future wanderings, Grissom would occasionally visit the
memory of that day and struggle to understand why he did what he did under that cloudless sky and in that deserted yard
so long ago.
As the summer sun had reached its summit and reminded the boy -who'd been left on Finnegan's doorstep when he had
been nought-but a baby, that food became available at this time of the day, Grissom had covered the lifeless body of Alice
with the unwanted rubbish of the place he called home and climbed back out of the arboraceous culvert.
You see, he was hungry.
..................................................
Even the crunching sounds of the wet settling stones of the causeway failed to abrogate the beetle's repining voice in his
head and as Grissom dolefully carried the two large empty pails across the narrow aisle dividing Alkali Bight, the question
reverberated once more. To his left, dark shapes squirmed in the shallow waters and just like the slimy Horse-eels that
revel in the trifling tidal changes, the wriggling bug called Alice haunted his own kind of mental anchorage. Grissom now
ceded that he'd he'd violated a universal standard, a pact that forbids such behaviour.
But -he'd sometimes offer to the buzzing utterance in his head, it was merely a societal-contract he hadn't understood at
the time. So was it the Finnegans' fault or a dark unknown inheritance from a woman who laid a sleeping baby on a doorstep?
Who can say.
Reaching the shore of the mainland and aiming his slovenly gait towards the little stream among the Mangle trees, Grissom
somehow took a strange type of solace that Ma Vittie had never asked that question currently quarrying in the godforsaken
void above his dull eyes. "Is there something wrong with you?"
Read The TV Guide, yer' don't need a TV.