CanaLit

 

 

When I Ruled the World

by Michael Canavan

 

Among the Spirits beneath, whom I seduc'd
With other promises and other vaunts

-John Milton

“I got hooch, Paolo.”

I didn’t recognize the dirty rags, his voice, or his face, but the long, thin wrinkled bag in his hand suggested something stronger than Tbird.  He stood in the circle of the sodium vapor light near the First Street underpass.

“Come on up,” I told him, shivering under my dirty bundle of blankets. Companionship is welcome, even from a stranger, and the hooch would ease the cold.  It’s sheltered up here, but fierce gusts can blow through unexpectedly, chilling the bones and agitating the spirit.  There was an appeal in his voice, something above street grit audacity; something commanding.  He climbed the concrete slope to my nest under the bridge, held out the bottle, and I took it.

“That’s top shelf scotch,” I told the stranger after a healthy belt.  Tremors of pleasure rippled through me.  “Better than anything I drank before I lost the world.”  I handed the bottle back.

“I used to drink it when I ruled the world,” he said, lifting the bottle to his lips.

“You got a name?”

“Milton will do as well as anything.”  He handed the bag back my way.

“I used to teach Milton,” I told him.

“Appropriate,” he replied, “for a former teacher’s fall from grace.”

I tightened my grip on the bottle for leverage or as a weapon.  “She was of age.”

“To each their choice of sin,” Milton mused.  

“Do I know you?”

“Everybody knows me,” he replied.  “They seek me out but deny my acquaintance.”

“Maybe I should do the same.” I said, drank from the bottle, and ignoring the etiquette of the dispossessed, held on to it. 

“Look, Paolo, we’re a lot alike.” He reached for the bottle I wouldn’t relinquish and frowned.  “When I ruled the world I took all I could get and the best of it. But it was never enough.  I kept taking. . .”  With a flash of movement he snatched the bottle right out of my hand.  “Until they turned on me.  The worm always turns.”  He looked down the street to the next bridge, took a swig, and glanced at the bottle.  “Got to make this last.  I got five more stops.”

I watched Milton descend the concrete embankment.  Then I bundled up tightly against the harsh wind.  Finding no comfort, I turned over and assumed a fetal position, my back to the chill.

 

Original Sin

By Michael Canavan

Some say curiosity was the original sin.  It was Jealousy—the name Eve gave to the lack of attention, competition for affection, and Adam’s preference of another’s company to hers.  This other’s love was unconditional, loyal, and unflagging.  The creature hung on every word he spoke as though second only to the Creator’s in significance—and never talked back.  No matter how hard Adam tried to teach him, the dumb beast showed no interest in words.  He barked.  Chuck just wanted to play, go for walks in the garden of Eden, and lie at his master’s feet when they settled down to sleep.

“It’s one-sided, you know,” Eve explained to Adam.  “You could tell Chuck that you’re God and he wouldn’t argue.  Not even if he could rearrange the letters of his species to prove you wrong.”  Perhaps God’s showed divine wisdom in giving Chuck such a limited vocabulary. Never asking pointless questions only increased the dog’s value, thus diminishing her own.

“He knows I’m not God,” Adam replied.  “I only hope I can be half the man he thinks I am, Eve, my little dear-to-my-rib.”

She disliked this often-expressed endearment.  One lousy rib was a small price to pay for a rightful and equal companion in paradise.  And yet, he reminded her repeatedly of his sacrifice which was actually painless, divine surgery performed under deep sleep.  When Adam awoke, there she was in all her God-given splendor.  He certainly didn’t miss the rib during their first few months of attraction, exploration, and torrid passion that he crudely referred to as the ‘Paradise Just Got Twice as Nice” Days.  But she supposed men grew tired of just about anything except a damn dog.

She turned from the sight of man and dog rolling in the grass to a path leading deep into the center of the garden where the tree of knowledge stood like a vast enigma. She’d asked God about the tree once and He’d replied, “Just enjoy the shade.”  This, of course only made her want to know more.  She wasn’t going to leave it at that.

“It’s the biggest tree in Eden.  How old is it?  What kind of tree is it? Can you eat the fruit of it?  What does it taste like?”

“Chicken.  Doesn’t everything taste like chicken once you get over the fact that it doesn’t look anything like it?”  Then God created dog.  “I’ve given him to you to enjoy while I go about creation doing God-specific tasks as befits my wisdom and power.”  Adam took an immediate liking to the furry little creature and named him Chuck.  Eve experienced her first pang of Jealousy.  Concealing her scowl with an artificial smile, she named him Chicken.

As Chicken and Adam rolled in the fragrant grasses of Eden, Eve gazed down the path that led to the tree of knowledge.  She’d seen a strange man there the other day using an odd object to cut its branches.  A distant thwack, thwack, thwack sounded from deep within the Garden.  She stepped onto the path and into a mound of fresh Chicken shit.  She wiped her foot on the no-longer fragrant grass and then ran toward the sound.  When she arrived at the tree, she found the man standing on a ladder, hacking away at the remains of the great tree.  “What are you doing?” she asked.

The man jerked, flashed a frightened look at the sky, and nearly fell off the ladder.  He looked around and his eyes fell on her. “You thcared me.  Who are you?”

“I asked first.”  Eve replied.  The nervous little man climbed down the ladder, circled her, and then reached out and touched her.  The touch rippled over her skin triggering heat and cold at the same time.  Then it delved under the skin.  Emotions scattered around her chest and head in frenzied motion like long-sleeping fish agitated by a predator.  They were ugly fish, terrifying fish, anything but Eden fish.  Repelled by the disorder, Eve waved her arms to shoo it all away.

The little man answered, evasively, “There ith God and there ith Todd.  I am Todd.”

“There is God and there is Eve,” she replied, minus the lisp.  “I am Eve.” She pointed to the shiny object in Todd’s hands.  “What is that?”

Todd replied, “an axth.”

She looked at the axe and then the tree.  “What are you doing to the tree?”

Todd’s smile was like another fish not from Eden—a fish that would snatch her in its teeth and grin happily as it crunched her bones.  The colors seemed to drain from Eden.  The sun lost its warmth and the safety she didn’t realize she had, vanished for one terrible moment.  Todd’s smile turned suddenly benign.  “I am a gardener.  I keep the garden in balanth.  That ith the tree of knowledge.  It threatenth to take over the garden and block out the light. It ith dithturbing the balanth tho I muth trim it.”

Keeping the garden in balance seemed to Eve like a reasonable thing to do and a very fine and important task.  But she did not trust Todd.  She stepped aback and examined his work.  He had hacked and chopped the tree to a stump and its limbs lay scattered on the ground.  Eve felt that something terrible had taken place and she was left feeling empty.  I name this Loss,” she said.  “This can’t be right.”

“Thometimeth we muth cut away belief to make room for the truth,” Todd said.  “I am God’th thervant.  I do hith bidding.”

 “You may have done your job too well,” Eve said.

“It ith Chuck’th fault.  He hath lifted hith leg and watered it.  It hath become overgrown.”

Eve named her response to this news: Anger.

 “Aren’t you curiouth about what I do with the debris?” he asked.

 “What do you do with it?” she asked.

“I make thingth that people want.  Producth.  I fulfill their needth, bring them pleathure, thatithfacthion and confirm their importanth.  And that maketh me happy.”

Eve thought about this.  She had made Adam happy before Chuck appeared.  “Can you make Adam want me again?”

“Of courth,” Todd promised.

 Oh, to be desirable again, she thought as she stepped over the hacked limbs and withering leaves lying around the stump of knowledge—for that was all Todd had left of it.  To be the only one Adam wanted to be with; to resume those “Paradise Just Got Twice as Nice” days.  Why had God given them that damn dog?

Todd held out his hands and offered her the axe.

She studied the object, a product—so foreign to Eden.  She took it from Todd, raised it over her head and swung it down on a limb just inches from Todd’s feet.  The limb burst and pieces flew off like so many fleeing fish.  Eve looked up at the lisping gardener.  The earlier emotion, the first one she gave name to, shone brightly in her deep, green eyes. “I guess I’ll make dinner,” she said, resting the handle of the axe on her shoulder.  “We’re having Chicken.”