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The Blue Bottle, Part Four

The Farm’s Breathing

By harry hoggPublished 2 years ago 8 min read
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The Blue Bottle, Part Four
Photo by 五玄土 ORIENTO on Unsplash

Rosie spent most of the afternoon in Dublin shopping with a couple of girlfriends, buying things she never imagined wearing. She’d been coerced by her girlfriends to get out of the dull outfits since her divorce. She tried not to think about the dream, being with Frank in Timbuktu. But ignoring the dream hadn’t worked as she was chastised at times for daydreaming. She’d been tempted, but saying it aloud sounds corny and unlikely, and she would suffer her friends’ humorous responses with a good deal of embarrassment.

On her way to catch the train home, Rosie reflects on the letter she’d written to Mark, and feels a cool shiver down her spine. Cold shudders are not something new. Rosie believes it is to do with being a twin, like the time Mark broke his leg at school, when his first girlfriend dumped him, and the day he signed up for the marines. In her mind, Rosie says a small prayer. It is simple enough. The only honest words are, come home, safe, Mark. I want to see you, hug you, have fun with you, drink beer, go sailing. I love you, Mark. If you can hear me, you must show courage and promise me you’ll come home. I don’t know where you are. Please, let’s promise we will see each other again.

In the evening, the clarity of the dream, the manuscripts, the warmth of Frank’s back, the vibration of the motorcycle between her legs, all feels like the greatest secret, to be kept safe from the outside world. Before bed, she checks out the window. The lane is quiet and empty. In her heart, as silly as she feels, she hopes to see Frank sitting astride his bike and smiles at her silliness. In the comfort of her bed, she lay the book down, unable to concentrate for the many questions, trying to second guess herself. What did Frank mean when he said I was a traveler? Rosie feels a sudden fit of panic? Have I found a different friendship in Frank? That I’m scared of losing him and the idea of never meeting with him again scares me? I haven’t told anyone what we spoke about, she mumbles.

And Mark? What does it mean, that shiver, when it always meant he was hurt. It’s hard to explain, but what if he is hurt? I’m so far away. He’s all I have. Oh, God, I have this imagination that runs wild with me. What if the idea of Frank being a nice man is simply an illusion. If it is, I’d quite like it to stay, she asks in prayer before lying down and pulling up the covers.

When Rosie wakes, the sun is shining. With a Sunday sigh, she lies under the covers feeling sad that she had not dreamt. But, nevertheless, she would get up, shower, have some breakfast, and think about getting ready for church. Rosie isn’t a true believer, but it offers comfort since her parents were killed in the accident. Maybe just another ten minutes, she tells herself. In what seems a second, she jumps from a doze. The car horn sounds again. How she wishes it was the rumbling of a motorcycle engine. She flops out of bed, throws on a dressing gown, and comes around the bed to shut the window.

“Good morning, Rosie. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“Frank!” Rosie says, almost a scream.

“Good heaven’s Rosie, I’m not a ghost,” he says, grinning up appreciatively.

“No…no… you’re not. I’m just surpri… whe… where’s your motorbike?” She asks, looking at a strikingly handsome car at the curbside.

“I thought you’d like a little more comfort,” he says, looking back at the sleek red car.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s beautiful, Frank.”

“Well, hurry up and get ready, we have a full days trip,” he tells her.

“Really? I need to shower, I’ll be ten minutes, don’t go away.”

Rosie leaps over the bed in a nervous tremble. In the shower, her knees feel weak, and her breathing deepens to a fiery lava burning in her chest. Thoughts about Frank arrive thick and fast but are gone again too far beyond the calling back.

Frank is at the front door when she comes out. “Frank,” she says, slipping her arm through his, “what is this car? It’s stunning.”

“It’s a 1955 Thunderbird convertible.” With white leather upholstery and white wall tires, the classic vehicle looks majestic in the early morning sunshine. Frank opens the passenger door for Rosie, then skips around and slips into the driver’s seat.

“Okay, Rosie. Let’s see,” he says and turns the ignition key. Immediately the radio starts to play Mark Knopfler’s The Long Road. Frank pushes his right foot onto the gas. The instrument gauges spark to life, tachometer, speedometer, even the clock’s second hand. Then, before he can whisper Rosie’s name, the Thunderbird hits a vortex, a kaleidoscope of color.

Rosie looks down and thinks: We’ll stop someplace. The right place, I hope, as she becomes aware of a deep universe. She turns her head toward Frank, who is smiling all his mischief. The Thunderbird opens its throat and fires in a red flare passed all interstellar life, passed the ferry leaving Dublin, passed the cottage where her dreams were first born, passed Saturn, on their way to September, the old farm, and evenings beyond. They fly to the sound of Knopfler’s guitar, and the sumptuous exhilarating power of Y-block V-8 engine, until the clock’s second-hand starts working backward. Frank sits back, watching the universe unlock his life, its jumble of ancient things, fragrant yellow linens, a child’s clothes, faded lace, locks of hair, and the great heavy doors of guilt.

Through the windshield, Rosie is staring into history. “Frank?” She says. “Am I dreaming? Are we in this dream together?” She takes a deep breath and continues. “Whenever I’m with you, I can’t tell if I’m dreaming or having a nightmare. I feel like I’m hallucinating. I feel like it’s not real.”

Frank, staring into the corner of the universe says, “verything’s a dream, Rosie. We pick the parts we want to fret over and make them our reality. But look, in the overall equation, these ideas are nothing if we don’t explore them. An idea is just an idea until we make it more. So, as I say, we could as just easily pick out the parts of a dream that comfort us, but where’s the fun in that?”

“I never understand you, but everything you say has mystery and romance about it. I feel I don’t belong here,” Rosie says, looking through a galaxy of stars.

“Rosie, did you dare open the manuscript?” He asks.

“Yes, I did open the manuscript.”

“And what did it say?”

“Theory of Time Travel. Okay, but why did you say I was a traveler?”

Frank, looking straight ahead, says, “Raven is the world’s sadness. He’s a poetic animal hurt by injustice. A squatter of the heart who’s face carries all the marks of a Greek tragedy. Different from Lorenzo, who can produce thunders and lightnings from his pocket. When you understand their history, their relationship, it is easy to accept why all three of us never receive visitors, never hear a knock at the door. We are denied death, Rosie. No-one came to our funerals. That’s the nature of our guilt.”

“And Raven is the world’s sadness?” She asks.

“Yes. Because he’s a poet, a sinner, serving a penalty of shame. Like me, in another life, he betrayed love and will never find forgiveness. It was our lack of faith, his kiss of betrayal and my gluttony that now confine us to live forever in time. There will never be an end to our pain. Just living through eternity with the knowledge of what we’ve done…that dreadful instant in time…that momentary weakness… all of it sounding alongside the lightnings and thunders that Lorenzo represents, Frank explains. “Lorenzo may have escaped the cross of shame but lives in his own eternal hell. Throughout history, Raven has been many men, all of whom tried to improve the world. Confucius, Saul of Tarsus, Columbus, Pope Paul, Einstein, and Gandhi…and many others. Lorenzo, in that time, has been Genghis Kahn, Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin and others, Lorenzo is the poet of death.”

Rosie listens intently, with tears in the back of her eyes. “That’s terrible, Frank. It’s so sad,” she says before realizing the Thunderbird is stationary. In the stillness, Franks continues.

“Raven’s gift is the Poetry or Love. Mere mortals have followed poetic words through the ages, through time, through space, toward whatever the past is thinking about but not what the future can be. Raven is confined to the future, where poets cannot work, without any memory of the past, a place full of dust, waiting on the girders for ideas not yet built, moving through long lonely nights until his tears dry with regret. That is why you are here, Rosie. To remind Raven what love is. To be a force greater than Lorenzo.”

The car’s tires have touched the red earth in the middle of a field.

“Where are we?” Rosie asks eagerly as the dust, kicked up from the tires, settles, they are near an old farmhouse.

Quickly followed by Rosie, Frank gets out of the car. A breeze mischievously becomes a gust, picking up the hem of Rosie’s dress. That gust becomes a moan, like desire, like a breath of lust hidden in a sigh. Frank knows that sigh is close.

“Do you feel that, Rosie?”

Rosie concentrates on holding her dress down in the middle of the field as if she is seventeen again in a fairground. “Yes. The wind is picking up, Frank.”

Accustoming his nose to the smells coming across the dry dirt, Franks takes in several whiffs. These are not familiar smells, like bread baking, but dangerous, like the whirling smell of Havana cigars.

Frank’s eyes straining, ears picking up on the deafening noise of flies hovering over a green garbage can, a banana skin hanging limply over the edge. A clue, he thinks. Somewhere, a chest is moving, a breath is being taken.

Rosie whispers. “It feels bad here, Frank.”

Part Five, What is the meaning behind Havana

Fantasy
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About the Creator

harry hogg

My life began beneath a shrub on a roundabout in Gants Hill, Essex, U.K. (No, I’m not Moses!) I was found by a young couple leaving the Odeon cinema having spent their evening watching a Spencer Tracy movie.

The rest, as they say, is history

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