Self-heal
I'm back with yet another oneshot. This is a poemfic based on Michael Longley's poem of the same name, which I recently had to study for an exam. Please review.
I wanted to teach him the names of flowers,
Self-heal and centaury: on the long acre
Where cattle never graze, bog asphodel.
Trowa Barton. It was a well-known name in our tiny Mayo village, where no discrepancy is missed, ignored or goes unpunished. Trowa's sins were hot gossip for the ladies who stood in doorways chatting to each other for lack of anything better to do than spout in poisonous tones and bless themselves as if the weight of his terrible deeds would somehow wash off on them, and the family men who drank away a week's pay in the pub while muttering about the evil that surrounded them. For all this talk, I never found out what Trowa had done that made him the bane of everyone's existence.
Could I love someone so gone in the head?
And, as they say, was I leading him on?
Countless times I was warned to stay away from him, as was anyone under the age of sixteen in the village. I couldn't understand why. I still don't. They say I led him on and that I should have gotten what was coming to me. I've been called a whore, a queer, a faggot and worse. Anyone else just clucks his or her tongue,
shakes their head, says I was just an innocent child and it was 'that animal's' fault, then walks off to the chapel to pray for my sins. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I went to him, tentatively offering friendship. I was young and idealistic.
He'd slept in the cot until he was twelve
Because of his babyish ways, I suppose,
Or the lack of a bed: hadn't his father
Gambled away all but rushy pasture?
Trowa lived alone on the outskirts of the community after being abandoned by his father. He'd never been to school, when he was around his father had been a notorious gambler and owed money to most of the families in the village. Trowa worked his neighbor's farms like a slave to pay off the debts, and supported himself by hunting in the nearby woodlands. Here I saw my opportunity to get to know him.
In the village I am an outcast as well, though not to the extent that Trowa was ostracized. My family is wealthy, and I am the only son, but my Father joked that he had no son, only daughters. I'm unfortunately small for my age, and effeminate. The jokes about my gender ran long before the incident. I also had an abnormally high I.Q., which put me two school years ahead of other boys my age. As a result, I was never really accepted by my peers, merely tolerated in the sense that if they ignored me, maybe I'd go away. I spent most of my time studying wildlife in the forest or studying music so that I wouldn't be stuck in this backward rural Irish community after I finished my education.
I approached Trowa with an offer to help his hunting become more successful, so that maybe he could sell some of the game he caught and pay off his debts quicker. He looked at me strangely as I explained my motives to him, as if some fifteen-year-old village kid knew nothing of his problems and how to solve them. I couldn't believe it when he said yes.
His skull seemed to be hammered like a wedge
Into his shoulders, and his back was hunched,
Which gave him an almost scholarly air.
He followed me silently into the forest and I led him to places that held the most game. I started teaching him how to tell an abandoned rabbit warren from an occupied one, plants that certain animals loved to eat, and others that they avoided. I showed him how rabbits would crouch in the nettles until danger passed, how to trap pheasants with a mixture of crushed raisin and foxglove, how to flush a stag out into low hanging branches where their antlers would get caught. Most of the time I showed him how to make lures with wild flowers and plants.
Trowa was eighteen, six foot three with dark red hair and wild green eyes and a lean, but heavily muscled body. I was fifteen, five foot two with pale blonde hair and wide blue eyes and a thin, girlish figure. We couldn't have been more different, but he listened intently to me and obeyed my instructions without question. I often had to turn my face away as he prepared to shoot a trapped animal, for even though I'd helped him catch it I hated to see another living creature hurt or dying. He was always merciful, though. He shot them quickly through the back off the head and told me when I could look.
But he could not remember the things I taught:
Each name would hover above its flower
Like a butterfly unable to alight.
Every day after school I'd meet him in the forest to try and teach him something new. Just when I thought I had nothing left to teach him, he told me that he'd forgotten the name of a certain plant and what he was to use it for. Gradually, all my lessons began repeating themselves, and although it would seem that he understood, some days later he would have forgotten again. It never frustrated me, I was glad to spend my evenings with him.
That day I pulled a cuckoo-pint apart
To release the giddy insects from their cell.
On the evening of the incident, he'd caught a rabbit in a snare and was preparing to shoot it. I turned around and walked away from him. He called after me.
" Where are you going?"
" I'm just going to sit here and look at the flowers until you're done."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him smile and shake his head, and I turned to look at him. I'd never seen him smile before. He didn't realize I was still watching him and the rabbit's head exploded in a splash of red. I let out a little girlish shriek, and when he turned to look at me I could feel my face turning as red as the remains of the rabbit's head. He actually started laughing at me then, and I had no choice but to laugh as well. Thankfully, he hid the bloody cadaver in his knapsack.
I turned back to the clump of plants that I was examining and he sat beside me to hear the day's lesson. On my hands and knees I leaned over to brush insects from the plants I needed.
Gently he slipped his hand between my thighs.
Suddenly, I felt him touching me, caressing me between my legs. I quickly turned in shock and before I knew it he was kissing me. I was pushed up against the roots of a nearby tree while he coaxed my mouth open and probed inside gently with his tongue. One arm was wrapped firmly around my waist while the hand of the other found itself between my thighs again. Occasionally, his mouth left mine and traced along my neck or the base of my throat, near my chest, or he buried his face in my hair and whispered my name over and over.
I was starting to get a little frightened, not of him but of what the community would say, and my father, and the boys at school. Boys weren't meant to kiss other boys, I wasn't meant to be here, I certainly wasn't meant to be kissing him back….I tried then to pull away, but he misunderstood me and began unbuttoning my shirt. While he was kissing and stroking my bare chest I struggled to get free, inarticulately protesting but my body wanted him to continue.
Suddenly, a passing hunter saw what was happening and pulled Trowa off of me. Seeing me trying weakly to push Trowa away while he just kept going obviously gave him the wrong idea. He started shouting at Trowa, something about unnatural lust and taking advantage of me. Without a word, Trowa walked off.
The farmer hauled me to my feet and inspected me. After making sure I was all right, he told me to go home and that he would take care of everything. I couldn't do anything but weakly nod and I walked home in a daze.
I wasn't frightened; and still I don't know why,
But I ran from him in tears to tell them.
The story went around that I had been walking alone in the forest when Trowa attacked me and tried to rape me. When asked about it, I was so shocked and humiliated that I could only burst into tears to avoid answering them. I figured that Trowa would be better able to handle them, and would tell them the truth about what happened. I was wrong.
I heard how every day for one whole week
He was flogged with a blackthorn, then tethered in the hayfield.
Trowa said that I was willing, and in a way he was right. But people were unsure of whether to believe his words, spoken with so little emotion, or my angry, confused tears. He wasn't prosecuted but the village reserved its own judgement. A mob dragged him out of his house at midnight, tied him in a field like an animal and beat him with a clump of blackthorn. They left him there and returned to beat him every night for a week. I was told about this by one of my sisters while I was locked in my room to prevent me from disobeying my Father again by going to see him. My Father gave me a whipping as well, though not nearly as severe as Trowa's and sometimes I wish it had been.
I might have been the cow
Whose tail he would later dock with shears
And he the ram tangled in barbed wire
That he stoned to death when they set him free.
After that I rarely saw Trowa, just heard of him from the voices of the neighborhood. They often talked about how violent he was towards animals. A rumor went around that he had nailed a live cat to the door of the church, and stoned an old sheep that wandered onto his property. One time I did pass him, on my way to the daily church sermon my Father forced me to attend. He looked me straight in the eye as he cut off the tail of a cow tethered to a wooden stake, then untied her, slapped her away and walked off. Sighing, I went to pray for my soul which, I had been assured, was going to burn in hell.