People of the Mist
Oaxaca, Mexico
Prologue
I saw my father this evening. I walked through the zócalo, opened the main cathedral doors, looked up, and there he stood, motionless. The lights shone on the engraved glass panels and illuminated him, as if he were some long passed saint come back to visit me. We stared at each other, but I couldn’t open my mouth to speak. The hairs on my neck stood on end and my hands shook. When I forced my mouth open, words stuck in my throat. He wore his best grey suit over a light blue shirt and a dark blue, hand woven tie. This was the outfit in which I had buried him.
Three old women, dressed in black, broke the spell. One stood in front of me and wouldn’t let me approach my father. She held a large bag of knitting in her hands and the wool spilled everywhere as she pushed me away. The second threatened me with a pair of scissors that she held in her left hand. The third shook a tailor’s measuring rod in my father’s face. He nodded, smiled sadly, and they all turned their backs on me and hurried away out of the cathedral and into the square.
I stood there in silence. Then, as the door snapped shut, I pulled it open and ran after them. The setting sun filled the square with shadows that whispered and moved this way and that, as if a whole village had come down from the hills to walk beneath the trees and dance in the rays of the dying sun. I stood on the cathedral steps and called out my father’s name, but I could see no sign of him among the cut and thrust of the shadowy crowd.
I ran out into that crowd and pushed at insubstantial people who stood firm one moment and then melted away the next like clouds or thick mist. I came to a side street and saw real people, flesh and blood beings, a group of villagers grouped behind their band. I stopped as the village elder put a live match to the taper of the rocket he clutched between his thumb and forefinger. The taper caught on fire and as the rocket roared upwards the village band started to play a military march. Thus encouraged, the rocket clawed its way into the sky to explode with a loud knock on the door of the gods.
Tired of grasping at shadows and afraid of this living phalanx of men marching towards me I went back to the cathedral and knelt at the altar of La Virgen de la Soledad, the patron saint of Oaxaca. Real wax candles stood before her altar, not tiny electric bulbs, as there are in some of the smaller churches. I put five pesos in the slot and lit a fresh candle from an ageing one that had started to sputter. For the first time in years I said a prayer, first for the soul I had saved from extinction by lighting my candle from his flame, then for my mother, then for the real father whom I had never known, and finally for the man I had just seen.
Tim closed his journal, screwed the top back on his Mont Blanc pen, laid it on the table, put his head in his hands and sat there, thinking. Then he got up, went to the kitchen, opened his last bottle of Sol de Oaxaca, poured the quarter litre that remained of the mescal into a glass. Six wrinkled worms floated down through the yellow liquid wriggling as if they were live. He pulled them out with a spoon, popped them one by one into his mouth and swallowed them whole. They tasted of smoke and garlic but he knew they would bring him visions and dreams. Then he wrinkled his nose and swallowed the mescal in three fierce, burning gulps.
He coughed, blinked the tears from his eyes and went into the bedroom where he undressed and climbed into bed. The ceiling fan droned on and on like a large propeller on a long-distance flight. Sleep did not come easily, nor did dreams, in spite of the mescal. When the dreams did come, they built like thunder clouds and he entered them with fear and a strange kind of joyous expectancy.
Comment:
This is the prologue from my first novel, People of the Mist. Following in the footsteps of my two blogger role models, Meg Sorick and Mr. Cake, I will publish People of the Mist, chapter by chapter, on this blog, as I revise it. I am a poet, rather than a novelist, as you will see. Your comments will be welcome as I start this venture in the old year (2016) and plan to continue through the new (2017).
Roger the writing is beautiful. Thanks for the shout out, I am honoured, first as a writer, second as a fellow Welshman and third and most of all as a friend.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Mr. Cake. I have learned a great deal from your posts and you have re-awakened my interest in the Surreal. The art works that you publish are wonderful. Some I know, but many are new. Surrealism works differently for each of us, but we walk a parallel path.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As I have from you. I will catch up with the rest of People of the Mists this weekend. I really have to go to bed as up early tomorrow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nos da!
LikeLike
I am so glad you like the writing. I wrote the first version of the novel in 55 days in 2010. Then various people gave me various opinions (mostly destructive) and now I am going back, seven years later, to what I always wanted to write.
LikeLike
I have read at least part of this before and neat to see it here in context. Looking forward to savouring these as I read them. My question is, not being familiar with rockets, how does the rocket claw its way into the sky? Is the path jagged in some way??
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interesting question: these rockets are held in the hand, lighted, and then released into the sky. Some are stalwart and give them a solid base. Others shake as they release them. Some throw them upwards and away so as not to get burned. The release gives shape to the climb. And yes, some do wobble and claw!!!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
And yes, you have heard and seen it before. It started as an independent piece and then got wrapped into a novel: like folding cheese or mushrooms into an omelette.
LikeLike
Good to find a verb that captures the action so well!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Should be interesting. I look forward to this, Roger! Happy New Year!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Tanya: it is one of my six new year hopes (not resolutions) and I have the Quixote in there too. Given the gift, I will fulfill the task. Tanya: I wish you and yours all the best for 2017. May it be a year of health, prosperity, goodwill, and continued outstanding writing. Roger and Clare.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Roger. I don’t make resolutions. The very word makes me think of “doomed to fail”…Lol
I wish you the same, my friend…both you and Clare!
LikeLiked by 1 person
“For this is New Year’s Day: ’tis broken resolutions, sir, we’ve come to sweep away.” A poem I learned and acted out when I was six years old. Lent and New Year’s … preserve us from things that go ‘bump’ in the night!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lol…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Excellent! I eagerly await the next chapter!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Meg. You are my role model in this adventure. I hope I can learn enough from you to keep my readers as happy and engaged as you do yours.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you so much for your kind words! I have to get busy, finish this story so I can return to WWI… People of the Mist is going be wonderful, and I’m very much looking forward to it. Happy new year, Roger!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I know that feeling: so many irons in the fire and which do I finish next. We’ll get it done. Mutual support and health and happiness will see us through. I am just finishing at least two mss. I’ll put them up soon.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The blessings of finding a community!
LikeLiked by 1 person
How exciting, Roger. I hope I’ll be able to follow your adventure to the end — or at least keep up with it as you become “rogermoorenovelist” in the coming year.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Angie. I’ll try to keep you all on your reading toes … if I can do half as good a job as Meg and Mr. Cake, I’ll be happy. And I mustn’t forget John Sutherland, with his rapid advance on Inkitt: also a true novelist with a mind for a plot. There’s Chuck Bowie and Kevin Stephens, too They’ll all have to watch my progress and keep me in line. Have a wonderful new year Andie and all the best for your writing.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ll be happy if I can do a few words with the fingers do stiff, Roger. Hunt and peck method for now with one finger 😢tskes time.
I think you can do a great job with the novel,and I am looking forward to reading it as it happens.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Angie. The arthritis is beginning to get to my fingers too and I type slower than I used to. I hate it so when the fingers lock and I have to click them open. I have two doing that and a third on the way. old age: I love it. But what choice do we have?
LikeLike
It will be a fitting prelude to the New Year, Roger. I look forward to reading them and eventually seeing your novels in print to join the rest of your voluminous work.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, John. You’ll have to keep an eye on my story-telling. I’ll need some help. Hopefully, I will finish revising this project and finally get it into print. Best wishes for the New Year and Happy and Productive Writing.
LikeLike