A Lucid Dream from Bocan Stone Circle

The man said his piece and left the kitchen. The boy remained seated at the table, his head bent down—the man’s final words echoing in his ear.

“You’ve too far to climb young fella and there’s just not enough time—I’m sorry, I really am.”

The boy picked up the mug in front of him and took another sip of the warm tea.

Thinking, processing and digesting the words slowly like dry gruel.

Rejection was nothing particularly new to him. Accepting it was getting easier with the passage of time. Eventually, he looked up. Momentarily, he’d forgotten the elderly couple sitting across from him either side of the white Stanley Range but both were warming their eyes on him—the aging parents of the man just left. Between them a large steel kettle whistled a tune and steam was beginning to gush from its spout. The old man moved it away from the hottest part of the cracked ceramic plate before speaking.

“That wasn’t a full on ‘No’, young fella, I know my son”

“It sounded like one to me” the boy replied quietly.

The old man’s face was weathered and his hair thinned away at the top of his forehead and all the way back. The bald spots carefully combed over with strands of grey-black hair from one of the gable ends of his head. Dark, blotchy reds and lighter pinks patched the skin of his face. He’d lived a life the boy guessed. The old man wasn’t cleanly shaven exactly but no further away from the sharp end of a razor blade than a day or two. There was pride and imperfection in him but probably not as much as earlier in his life. A hard-earned peace scented the air that felt as wholesome as the half-eaten slice of apple tart on the plate in front of the boy.

“I can have a word with him. But he’s not wrong. You’re nowhere near the shape or strength he needs you to be in. But, maybe I could give you hand with that if you’d like” the old man offered.

The boy’s eyes narrowed and focused more intently on the old man sitting opposite, probing him for hidden weakness.

“Now, why would you do something like that, Mister?” the boy responded.

“Maybe, I see something of myself in your troubles”

“You don’t seem to have many troubles to me, Mister”

The boy took another sip from his tea and scooped the remains of the apple tart on his plate into his mouth. Then, he moved his attention to the old woman to distract away from the old man’s unexpected offer of help.

“I could eat this all-day, Ma’am. It’s settling down my nervous system no end”

He smiled the words to himself and the old woman smiled too.

“Help yourself to another slice. Anything made with a bit of grá is good for the nervous system they say” she replied kindly.

The boy looked again at her and reached for another slice from the big plate in the centre of the table. Still hungry and now a little more grateful too. The woman’s skin was porcelain smooth and white. Her blue-grey eyes, though, had known great sadnesses that seemed recorded by a web of thin wrinkles encircling her sparkling eyes. The boy returned his gaze to the old man and could see his eyes had not seen or known the same pain as his wife and were cloudy in spots.

“If your husband helps me will his flaws make my weaknesses worse, Ma’am” the boy asked simply enough.

The words were spoken without much thought and he dropped his stare to the floor slightly embarrassed to have asked the question. Sharp intakes of breath pierced the air, and a little silence followed the turbulence for a little bit.

“Well now, isn’t that a question“ she answered.

“But, you needn’t worry too much, his flaws are quite un-complementary to your own, I’d say“

She gently knuckled the top of the ceramic with her ring finger as she replied and turned her head to regard her husband over the black surface top of the range that separated them. There was great power in the love and old pain that her look contained.

She smiled again.

The boy’s eyes returned to the old man and he could see the question had needled him. The dark patches of red skin on his cheek throbbed a little but not too violently as his wife’s beam massaged them with ointment.

“Not many would offer to help you given your troubles, why, would a little feckin’ garsún ask such a question of my wife and of me?”

The boy nodded his head slowly in agreement for the old man was indeed correct on the first point and entitled to an answer on the second.

Quickly.

His palms sweated below the table line and moistened a worry onto his hands—could these two hurt him. Worse, might he hurt them in return. After all, what’s good for the nervous system today might not be so tomorrow. Finally, he gulped both of them in one last time, closed his eyes, and answered the old man’s accusation.

“It’s because I’m very close to drowning, Mister”

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