The Moon Around Sarah by Paul Lederer Read Free Book Online Page A

continued despite the storm. A frothing madness. An inward-rushing attempt at emotional coitus. The rebuff of the dark headlands. Some broken estuary where the tide briefly is, briefly rested and beloved sea and land could co-join. A swirl of angry tide, a hissing withdrawal from the rocky beach as it was rebuffed endlessly … sea dreams. All
they
knew of the sea was that it collected in mercury-gray tidepools when the dream-storm was ended. These were the residues of rages past, a spattering of quiescence detested for its stagnant after-soul, crowded with unspeakable, strangely flapping, quite desolate mud-colored sea life. And yet the seacontinued to rage forward, to beat its futile head against the unyielding rock.…
    I am mad. If I wasn’t always mad, I am surely mad now.
    Eric’s heart was beginning to slow. He had his forehead bent to the cold wooden rail at the very end of the pier.
    ‘I should have known better!’ he shouted into the buffeting wind. Had he actually believed anything could be different this time? Returning like a dog who has been kicked into the alley without any real memory of transgression .
    ‘
It’s a lie
,’ he said, lifting his bloody face to the icy wind. It
was
a lie! But it had been repeated so often that at times he couldn’t force himself to remember the truth. The endless repetition had transformed the accusation into truth, even in his own mind at times. Some crime committed in a dark, savagely-scarred night dream. The prisoner stands accused and is judged guilty: by his
own admission
… of dreams. The nightmare is the admission….
    Eric straightened up, reached shakily for a handkerchief and wiped the blood from his lumpy face.
    ‘I hate you! I hate you, Raymond!
Father
.…’ he added with a twisted expression.
    What bastard Fate had deposited his small soul among that twisted family?
Family
. Now that was funny. Is that what you would call a nest of mis-fitting grotesques like them? Some poison crept in their veins. Everyone said it was because of what had happened to Sarah, but that was not true. There had always been a sickness dwelling among them.
    As a child, he did not think there was a night when he had gone to sleep without hearing Raymond roaring at Mother; without her shrieking back. Only Edward seemed to have survived unscathed somehow – maybe because he was always lost in his books.
    ‘If only I didn’t need the god-damned money.’
    But he did. His adolescent ambition had been music. He had dreamed of applause, rapid acclaim, independence. But the truth, painfully discovered, was that he did not have the talent or the showmanship or the sheer perseverance to make much of that career. He had left home with the mockery ringing in his ears, to make an attempt at it; a swelling bravado in his heart. But the truth was, he had only left home to be leaving, and years of weekend gigs at cheap roadside bars had done more to complete his collapse than to free him. A dozen pairs of hands clapping almost apologetically; sleeping in a van with drugged-up musicians . Standing beside a muddy road somewhere in Nebraska until a truck slowed down and stopped and two bearded farm boys got out and beat him senseless, taking his last twenty dollars and his battered Gibson Les Paul guitar.
    And so Cain cometh home.
    And so Adam beat the shit out of him.
    Original Sin: oh, yes, there is such a thing – much larger than some Biblical concept. It was all around, hovering like a stormy sky. We are all guilty … of
something
called know-not-what … just ask Sarah.
    Just ask Sister Sarah.
    With his hands anchored deep in his pockets, Eric started back toward the shore, the wrathful rain driving down against his back.
    Finish it! Be gone…. He smiled to himself, thinking: there must be
some
place east of Eden if one could only scrape up the bus fare.

    Ellen didn’t feel well at all. It had been all right earlier; fun, in fact. More fun than she had had for a long time. She had