Sophocles, Sleet, and Serendipity

The automobile that had hit Fern was still in the same spot it had been in for the last six months, a hulking, crippled beast with rusty mange and spiderweb scars cracked into its once-ferocious eyes. Still and scabbed, it sat, not quite slumbering among the other steel skeletons and burnt-out frames but rather caught in a cold, glassy state of pension. I could just barely make it out from behind the green quilt of pine trees at the end of the wheat field. Marcus always had the better eye for it.

Fern always used to talk about the magic of happy accidents, the whole serendipity bit. The words of another love child, I thought she was crazy, happy as I was to be sharing a dime cola under the seedy light of the gas station every Friday night. Fern could talk for hours about the magic coincidence of every occurrence in the universe, how a unique set of wind factors and biological malfunction met in perfect conjunction to make a bird fly into a window or how a genetic mutation, left unchecked, could result in the most torturous cancer. I had yearned to point out that neither of those exactly qualified as “happy,” yet fire consumed my lip as my teeth dug in and wished for some real nutrition. I just wanted to speak of Sophocles. 

***

“You ever wonder why Oedipus’s kids weren’t horribly mutated?” 

“And where would that leave poor Antigone? It would ruin her own tragedy.” I passed him the bottle of lemonade, pausing to catch the glimmering golden gyres inside as the sun sang into the glass. “Everyone came for the catharsis at the end anyway: the realization of his own impiety, his repentance, the absolutely awesome horror of his actions being the killing stroke, or blinding, I should say”

“Antigone? I thought she had already hung herself by the time he lost his eyes.” 

“You insult me with your ignorant company.” My cheeks suddenly felt cold as I heard windy whispers in my ear, loving the way my countenance must have looked if it appeared to be anything like what I now saw on Marcus’s face. My arm crooked in the Roman tradition, he bent down to meet my lips before we both turned to watch the wheat dance, baring its vegetative wealth as one brilliant collection of blonde braids swaying. 

“Besides, you speak as if the girl wasn’t already pained enough, a murderously heroic father and a heroically murderous uncle.” I took the collection of tragedies from where he had laid it down on its spine, slightly vexed and endeared simultaneously with his persistent carelessness. “Bollocks. The last page is missing. I was almost finished with it. I told you to be careful with it.”

“Hmm.” He looked over my shoulder. “A pity for which you have my deepest apologies.”

“I suppose Fern would beg differently. Not a pity at all, right, merely ‘part of a series of highly irregular, unfortunate events all conducive to my personal improvement.’ Of all the things to love about her, her tenacious confidence surrounding that queer theory of hers never fails in its charm, don’t you think so?”

Watching the graceful arches of his tongue against the porcelain perfection of his teeth as they moved in response, I thought of how much I owed her. It was her fall that had sent the book soaring out of my hand in the first place, a crippled little blackbird with tattered feathers collapsing into the gelid mud of the road. I swear I saw Marcus shiver when his knuckles first collided with the ground, wrapping around the same spine he so neglected on the hill over the wheat field, his eyes lost as they grazed the junkyard on the edge of the woods below before he kissed me. I think I fell in love with his wardrobe before him though, the polite cream shirt collar over the wool sweater of spun storm clouds. Faintly, he smelled of old paper and I noticed small stains of book glue on his hands as Fern’s bijoux flashed across his spectacles, wiping the mud off her skirt with her contagious smile. She told me on the way home, his master’s card in my pocket, that she never knew I could talk and stutter so much at the same time. 

“Perhaps you ought to be more concerned with how you’ll manage without me at university.” My blood like magma, I opened the first few buttons of my shirt, trading the sun’s sweltering hug for its scorching kiss. Pleasantly, a few sapphires of perspiration glistened on Marcus’s brow as he did the same. “Who else shall tell you when you are being most vexingly cretinous in neglect of your studies?”

“Nonsense. Such a capacity is wont to remain with me at least till the summer term’s end. Besides, I want to stay with you while I can.” Standing up, he pitched a small stone across the field, narrowly missing a dilapidated tractor on the edge of the field. “I’ll miss your distraction.”

My thoughts in that moment outnumbered the stars, but such an incredible sight paralyzed my tongue before I could express any of them. Petitely delicate, a fluttering feather of winter came to rest on Marcus’s shoulder, an icy doily against the checkered cloth of his shirt. We then both quivered as he had done last winter when he reached for my book, whistling a witty word about the hope of Brutus’s ambitions but the folly of his hope of executing them. Fern had asked me on the way home if she could meet our acquaintances, Cassius and Antony (they sounded handsome). It was not long after that I received soft words as well as erudite ones from him. 

Taking the arm soon to be covered in tweed on a train to London, I asked if he had ever seen such a beautiful tragedy in real life as we were now experiencing. I also asked if he knew of winter to trespass in the summer.

“Once. It was also the fifth but during the time in which Rome still held these fields. They built the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore on the spot. That’s just what they say though.”

Veiled under the snowy bridal train of December, the August wheat stood gallantly in preparation for its final days of life in its new white prison. 

***

I envied the hell out of Marcus as I fingered the quarter in the phone booth. A five-minute break from the shop meant paradise and perdition all at once as I dreamt of his adventures between the bookshelves of Cambridge. Only two calls in three months, roughly calculated, equaled four hundred and forty hours of palms spreading the dove wings of the greatest volumes and classics and gorging on the rich black labyrinth of the letters. To think he had wasted so much time on the phone with me at the beginning, laughing as he asked about Fern and my old job at the factory. He offered his grandfather’s financial services after I forced him to tell me all that he had learned of Heraclitus, Socrates, and his namesake, the scanty vestiges of lectures dripping through the receiver tantalizingly unsatisfactory. The iron pitt sank lower in my stomach as I refused his kindness, hating how the two human loves of my life seemed so mutually exclusive. At least he had the sense to right himself and call me much less now; he had maybe one hundred more hours to study, and sometimes I didn’t feel the firebrand inside my chest as I thought of him.

A yawn greeted me from Cambridge.

“You almost sound tired.”

“Thus is my unfortunate reality.” But what of our languor above the wheat field? 

Stagnant air stung my ear as our lips remained idle.

I nearly choked on the steely blades I forced from my mouth next, jealous of the ease with which the worker outside broke the frozen sheen over the asphalt, the shovel roaring in pain as its nose smashed against the ground.

“I hope you do not share the same contempt for your classes.”  

“Nowhere near the passion that so compels your obsession with them.” His voice sounded like the curmudgeonous creaks of the worn and weathered floorboards of the tenements. It was a page about to fall out of the book, demanding you to be careful with it. “Forgive me. It’s the exhaustion. Classes are fine, I guess, or so I have been told….Finished your book?”

You don’t remember? Why can’t you remember? The last page, you lost it in the field before...

“Not yet. Since it’s gotten colder, I’ve gotten more shifts to pay for coal.”

“Are they still shoveling the snow out there?”

“The salt barely helps anymore.” My teeth clicked as I stuffed my other hand into my pocket, hating every other fabricated word as I want to know of Seneca. He had promised me more the last time we spoke. “The mayor had a giant fire built in front of the town hall though. It helps, but I don’t think it’ll last long with how little the surplus of firewood was this year.”

Someone called his name in the background, but I continued anyway. This was my time.

“What’s funny is that Fern thought this would all end by December. Now, there’s always slush if there is no new precipitation.” 

“How is she?” A cacophony erupted behind him but his voice did not waver anymore than it already did. “Jamie just picked up my mail yesterday and I saw her postcard.”

“The one she sent in October.”

“You must give her my apologies; I haven’t been in the dormitories in ages.”

Why couldn’t we talk about Casca? I would have even settled for Metellus Cimber if it meant forgetting Fern.

“That’s why I called. There’s been an accident-”

Another yawn interrupted me before it was followed by a ghoulish cough that seemed to last forever. “Another one of her fantastically happy ones? Let me guess. A lucky series of phenomenal occurrences have so aligned as to grant her a promotion or, better yet, the ability to fly?”

She flew alright… sixty feet from where she stood when the twin halos blinded her, the innocent, cursed Oedipus. Oedipus also sat in the front seat, ten feet from her, the maudlin tears of a dumped drunk running down his cheeks instead of blood, as the blizzard raged on. That night, the wonderful powers of the universe so coincided that Mrs. George Wickham’s decision to divorce Mr. George Wickham along with five bottles of beer pumping through his veins and the perfect snow with the perfect arrangement of flakes in that very moment all allowed Fern McGully to test her hypothesis. 

“You there?” 

No.

“Yes. Fern’s fine. Do you still read the obituaries?”

“The campus doesn’t get papers from so far away.” Stupid. “Why?”

I slammed the phone down so hard, it rattled the entire booth. I could only just see the woman outside with the shovel look up at my obscured distortion through the chilled glass panes as I tried to give my own catharsis. For as unintelligible as it was, at least I had authentic tears.

*** 

The second August since the eternal snow came gave us a second baptism of trials, the machines in the factories eventually breaking in as icy tendrils seeped their way in and cracked the metal. A severance check became two stones of coal and some stockings. All the paper money and checkbooks had been collected, mandatory donations to the bonfire at the center of town. At least finding new employment presented itself as simple, just an application to be another shoveler. We were underhanded as it was. 

Deciding the trudge was worth it, I got out of bed and retrieved my book from where I had hidden it in the closet. How I had perspired when the officers searched my apartment for any remaining scraps of paper for the bonfire, my sweat like icicles tearing my skin in the unmerciful, cavernous air. Besides the book, I did not have much else to lose, most of my cash first converted in the banks, before their obsoletion had forced closure, and then wired to Marcus the last time we spoke. It was the first time he had called.

Just the thought of opening the book hurt as I walked through the thick, rimy slab on the sidewalks, my feet numb as my thin soles plunged into the snow over and over again. I could still hear the scolding hisses of the neighborhood mothers as they thrust pairs of tennis shoes and sandals out to racing children here, some minor burns on their callused feet enough to quickly persuade them. How many of those feet resembled shrunken plums with their frostbite now?

Climbing the hill felt much more difficult than it used to. Perhaps it was the insufferable blanket of white that suffocated everything now, but then again I had not made the journey in almost a year. 

My eyes were cut gazing at the junkyard from my solitary perch, much as my hands had been the time Marcus convinced me to play hide-and-seek in there with him. We both had to get tetanus shots afterwards. I had loved him then though, so it was possibly worth it. 

Fern’s truck and her happy accident told me to look on the bright side. Serendipity had not eluded me, after all. Marcus had called, gratitude for posting his bail somewhere between the slurred syllables. Of course, I had obliged him more. I didn’t ask what he intended to do with the rest of the money. 

Before I could ponder it further, a great gale came and kissed my face with its blue lips painfully. The playful lover, it seized hold of my hat, the white one the old woman had given me before she let me go. Boundless as water trails carved my cheeks, I ran after it, but, alas, I lost it among the snow as its icy haze filled what was left of my watery vision. To its credit, the snow was a faithful companion, unmarred by death or other distractions. It had never left my side once this past year.

Crumbling at the summit, only the crackles of the ice consoled me, until my knee met what was not snow. Digging with the inspiration the hound gives to the fox, I finally broke as I caught sight of the yellowing cream of the parchment, protected in a cage of dewy grass. It fit perfectly against the aged spine of the book, the peacock’s final tailfeather. 

So this is my happy accident, Fern. 

Shedding my parka, I sprinted back up the hill, the emerging sun’s embrace on my back as I stripped more and more off. How I cherished the hot rose blooming in my chest as its heat coursed through my body, the first time in all these endless months. It was not long before I held my right hand to my brow against the sunny glare as my left threw down the last threadbare shirt. Slick with sweat and not a toe in the shade, I read all summer long, beloved in Sophocles's welcome.