Chapter 39
Frankenstein, we call them Frankie, puts on their little boots and their little jacket. We go outside and the trees are too green for October. A gust up high makes the top of the trees dance hypnotically.
Joselyn is still here but she is different now. She looks off in the distance and stares more often than she did before Frankie was born.
Periodically we return to the cabin for a getaway. We clean it top to bottom out of deep ties of admiration, hoping one day we’ll come back and never leave. We hope Frankie will see the benefit and importance and will want to come back and continue the tradition, if not, that is our failure. Only we know the path. Only we know how to read the roots of the trees on the forest floor like cursive.
The World is always speaking to us.
My first dumb purchase was in fact my greatest. Scarse. The riverboat casino I bought. In benighted times they’d board up the mentally ill onto ships and seal them inside and send the vessel downstream. Many times it was a cure for insanity. What they call a sea journey. There are paths in river systems few know of that connect one side of the world to the others. Joselyn is one of the people who knows.
“I lie-leaves,” Frankenstein said waddling beside me on the deck of the boat.
I say, “Oh yeah? Which one’s your favorite?”
The way they walk looks like they’re perpetually falling and using their legs to prop themself up. Frankenstein says, “Apple.”
Frankie pointed at an approaching tree on the riverbank.
“Which one?”
“Apple,” they repeat and nod their head. Then look up past me and say, “Dat.”
“Oh. The red one?”
“Yes,” Frankie says, pleased.
Lo and behold there was one bright red leaf hiding among the green ones. Twirling on its tiptoes.
The windchime on the stern of the boat is steady sailing silent. We float downstream slowly.
Sometimes I think that night when Morgen drugged me I actually died and right now, at this moment, my new life is starting. And all that happened in-between was just a form of hell I had to go through. A hell I’m proud to have made it through. And it doesn’t matter whose soul is living inside of me, as long as it’s kinder than the last. More loving. I hope each soul that inhabits me will expand my inner dwelling place far past the edges of my body. I want my heart to always be opening.
Frankenstein balled their fist and made a little cough with their little lungs.
And I got that minty-tingly feeling.
“Frankie. Come here baby,” Joselyn says, and Frankie toddles over to have their jacket fixed.
I turn back around.
A gush of wind makes the one red leaf vibrate more than the rest.
The leaf disconnects.
Snaps off the branch and begins the ballet for which it was made.
First and last performance.
A gradual pirouetting down.
Stem first.
I kiss Frankenstein on the forehead.
The cool air hits the bells of the windchime.
Slow, deep, breaths.
The leaf makes no sound when it hits the water, but small ripples form.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This, and everything else, is dedicated to
Alyssa, for she is divine
&
Ambrose, for he makes all things new
Special thanks to:
Tobias Carroll for publishing it
Jeff Jackson for understanding it
X. Luma, my brother, for loving it
Also thanks to:
Jessica Boyter
Stephanie Boyter
PJ Burger
Jace Einfeldt
Andrew Sean Greer
Rick Grime
James A. Hatfield
Liza St. James
Nathan Kornegay
Rebecca van Laer
Anna Major
Gary Phillips
Sam Pink
Bud Smith
Matthew Whitehead
The OG Paydirt crew in Portland
James Jacob Hatfield is a displaced engineer, a painter, and many other contradictions. His work has appeared in X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Barely South Review, Chaleur Magazine, Havik, and others. His ekphrasis poem “torrents of lahar, No. 36” was anthologized by the North Carolina Museum of Art. He is a Sterling Fellow and a Weymouth Fellow. He is the creator and curator of the Gemini Sessions Substack. He lives in Durham, NC.
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