The Whale, The Fox and Mr. Bagell (Full Edit I)

The Whale, The Fox and Mr. Bagell (Revised/whole)

Part I

I am sitting next to the lake. I have been holding this orb of light in my hands for over two hours and I can’t look away. Not even for a second. Not even for the sake of being aware of anything that might be of harm to me.

I found it.

I found it in the dark.

I found it in the place where no one ever looks.

I found it when I didn’t even want it.

I sit on this cold rock and my feet sink into the silt muck of the lakeshore. The muck oozes through my toes like it did in my youth when I would run along the shoreline and my dad would watch form under the tree with the rope swing and he would yell out, “Faster Jonny, Faster”.

The house is far away to the east and the rest of my family sleeps soundly in their beds with their covers tucked in around their necks like scarves and their toes poke out from under the sheets because it helps to keep them cool in the warm night.

I am not worried about anything.

It’s almost as if I have never worried about anything in my whole life.

The water is still and calm and rested and it looks like glass; glass that someone might be abele to walk across. Then he is there at my side. His fur is a dark orangey red and his tail is white white white. The eyes in his foxy head are yellow like the fire you find between the orange fire and the blue fire when your burning smores in your backyard. His name is Pure and he talks quietly to me about staying calm and remembering what love means and how this will all end for some but that for me it’s only the blink of the beginning. He tells me about staying on the narrow road and about remembering rules that are coated in gold and blood and about fighting the good fight.

Pure has a very thick coat and his tail seems to exude light from its end. His voice is like a warm cloak that sets itself upon my mind and my heart and my soul and it makes me feel like the broken pieces of me are being knitted back together. He speaks very slowly and very quietly and as I stare at the orb I strain to catch every last letter that drips from his mouth. And then as if he were never there I am alone again there on the rock with my toes sinking in the mucky siding of the lake.

No paw prints.

No fur on the mud.

No smell of canine or fox or whatever it is that they are.

Time has past but how much I am not sure.

It’s then that the orb I am holding, Whale I will call it, begins to change color. I wish with the fullness of my whole being that I could in some form or fashion describe to you these colors. But, I do not know their names or their hues or their origins and my mind is not large enough or wide enough to capture them fully and because of this I apologize with the deepest of feeling because if I were to accurately describe them I am sure that your whole life would be better and more complete.

Whale shows me things.

Whale turns memories into lessons.

Whale loves me so he scolds me.

Whale makes a char filled brain clean and clear.

Whale showed me all of his colors and shapes and then inside of him I began to see them. They danced around and were all connected and were all made of the colors that Whale had been showing me. There was no sound but I could still hear them singing and stomping their feet and slapping their thighs. Whale never spoke but I could feel his words on my heart like stickers from the field sticking into the soles of me feet. They were there to stay; they were never going to be taken away.

They clung but not in a needy way.

They wanted to be there.

I wanted them there more than they wanted to be there.

I am not sure if this is true.

Whale dimmed and those that were in him went away and the colors reverted back to white and everything in my head got still and quiet again. My inability to divert my gaze was cut and my head jerked back and my eyes rolled like ping-pong balls in their sockets and my face rushed with blood and I fell back-first to the cool earth and passed out.

I think it has been ten minutes.

The air still feels the same and the stars seem to be in the same places they were before. The moon still low in the east.

The orb sat cradled in the deep mud of the lakes shore and inside it was what seemed to be a low burning candle. The flame was low and it flickered and it did not give off much light but for some reason I do not feel like Whale will ever go out. Ever. Never. Ever.

I sat up and the wet shirt on my back clung to my skin and my body is cool and I feel relaxed and very tired. I look out on the lake and I see a figure on the other side. It is large and roundish in the center and it saunters in big lumbering steps from side to side and it takes me a few moments to realize but the figure is walking the edge of the shore and is coming towards me. He’s hugeness scares me very much. The blood in my heart pumps much more quickly and I can hear it in my ears like a sledgehammer against conrete.

He?

Is it a male?

Yes, He.

He.

He stands before me and I stare up at him, ninety-degrees up. The kind of up that people talk about when they are referring to skyscrapers or hot air balloons directly overhead. He is a bear. He’s not a bear that I have ever seen nor is he one that I can affiliate with species that I have seen on the television or in books. His fur is flowing but thick and rough like straw and his paws remind me of large mitts of leather and knives. Hit snout and teeth deserve respect and so I do and I step back a few feet remembering not to trip over Whale who lies dim behind me.

He stares out over the lake and over the land and up at the stars and at the moon and he sniffs loudly and he blinks frequently. At this point I am unsure as to whether or not he knows I am even there. But then he speaks.

“Quite the evening I must say.”

His voice is so deep that I can feel my ear drums vibrate and rattle. My heart murmurs and stops for a split second and my breath is knocked out of me and I go blind. I blink and my sight is regained and tears stream down my face while catching a breath floating by on the cool evening breeze. The lungs in my chest fill and I feel life come into my body. My eyes focus and everything is silhouetted and the hair on the back of my neck rises and falls.

“Do you not think so?”

I am still catching my breath and try to push out a yes towards his face that towers above me. The bear speaks very slowly and lingers on words and meditates on every thought that is spoken.

He seems brilliant.

He seems to know a lot about things that I don’t.

He seems to eat well.

His voice reverses the invention of fear.

“Bagell’s the name.”

I am unsure as to what my next move should be. I keep exchanging glances between Mr. Bagell and the stars that sit atop his head. Brilliance sat atop his shoulders.

“Do you know Whale?

I ask it like a child. I ask it as though his answer might complete my life. I ask in it such a way so that I am prepared for my whole life to change. His face twists and his eyes wonder and he scratches under his chin and picks me up and places me on his shoulder.

“Walking is a good way to spend a conversation.”

I didn’t agree or disagree. The drop from his shoulders was easily twenty feet so I was along for the ride weather I wanted to be or not. The fur on his shoulders is thick and very comfortable and so we began our walk along the edge of the lake.

“I know Whale.” He said with bass in his throat. “Have you met Fox? I love Fox”.

I say, “Yes, I met Fox while my feet were in the mud.”

“Fox is very quiet. Fox speaks for me most of the time.” Mr. Begell says.

All of this seems very vague and simple. I want to know if this bear knows Whale and if he does, what is Whale? Who is Fox? Why am I not in bed?

Part II

I am cold and my butt is numb and the door creaked as I walked into the cabin where the rest of my family was asleep. My watch got water in it when I was swimming four days earlier and so now I can’t tell what time it is but the sun is peeking up over the tree line so I know that I have to get in bed now or my parents will know that I was gone all night.

Mr. Bagell talked so slowly that in the time we spent together he only made out about seven or eight whole sentences. That’s fine though, everything he said was gold, pure gold that glimmered in a night so dark that without his words we would not have known where we were going.

I am so tired.

How are my eyes open?

Where are my shoes?

I don’t care.

Brother is sleeping in a ball on his bed with no covers and the only thing he has on are his whitey tighties. He’s twelve but when people my parents know get invited over to the house my brother talks to them as if he were an old Englishman with a vocabulary that resembles that of the child of a dictionary and an etiquette manual for young adults.

I’m undressed with my shorts on and as I lie here my calves are burning and my head is spinning and my butt is still numb because, even though Mr. Bagell is a nice and kind individual, his shoulder is not. His fur is thick and when I sat in it I sank but after a short time the hair began to itch the back of my legs and without being able to maneuver much I was stuck with a numb butt for some time.

I can’t remember anything.

I can’t remember what he said.

I can’t recall one single word.

Did he even speak?

I fall asleep with my hair sticking with sweat to my forehead and a light steam rising from the damp warmth of my chest.

I am asleep.

Part III

I am awake.

My watch is completely lifeless now. The incessant ticking that I had once found so unbelievably annoying was now gone and it made me sad. That was my dad’s watch and his dad’s before him.

Mom is in the garden, Dad on the porch, brother most likely in the woods and sister is asleep in her crib in the back room that was once a sewing room but is now her room and not a sewing room. My mother, when I was younger would make all of my clothes back in that room but now I am too old and I prefer to get my clothes from the stores in the city.

I am walking outside when I see Whale. He’s just sitting there in the middle of mom’s garden in a patch of kale. Mom doesn’t even notice him. Dad doesn’t notice him.

Is he there?

Can they see him?

He is still dim.

In the garden?

I am not going to go out to him yet because I never go into the garden and my mom will be wondering why I am all of the sudden taking interest in the garden and if she hasn’t seen Whale yet then she definitely will and due to this a lot of questioning will happen and I have no answers about anything. So I stay inside. I walk back to my room and I sit down on the bed. I have to go to the Lake.

Put shirt on.

Open window.

Go out window.

Run to lake.

“FOX?!”

“FOX?!”

“FOOOOX?!”

I am not very interested in Mr. Bagell right now because he talks much too slowly and I need answers and I need them in a quick fashion. I think Fox can help me in this way.

“FOX?!”

The dirt of the lakeside is drying and cracking and my toes have nothing to sink into so I just sit on the rock again and look out onto the water and wonder if I really just dreamt everything last night. But that couldn’t be because my calves were still sore this morning and my shirt still had mud on it from the lake.

“Fox!” I yelp.

“Hello boy, why are you yelling so?”

“Do you know Whale?” I ask.

“Yes, I know Whale. He is Me and I am He and We are We.”

I am confused and I fear that if I ask Fox why Whale is in my mother’s garden that he will give me an answer to which I will need an equation to understand. So I stay quiet. Fox has never looked at me. He just looks out at nothing I suppose. He is very still and I try to pet him but my arm can’t ever seem to reach him no matter how close he seems but he is always near.

Fox’s tale I have told you about. His paws are perfect white even when he walks through the mud and the field and the water and the muck. His nose is black like death and his eyes are deep and dark and they taunt me with the wondering thought that they just might hold the answers to the universe. His fur is a shade of orange that Whale showed me.

“Fox, who are you?”

“I am your helper, boy.”

“OK.”

I decide to not ask him about Whale but rather I go straight to the point.

“Fox, I need you to get Whale out of my mom’s garden.”

“Boy, I can’t do that. Whale is everywhere. You will be seeing much of him now.”

I turn to ask him what he means but as I turn he is gone and a wind blows and my hair flips up over my ear and I see some clouds rolling in. It’s going to rain. I head home.

Part IV

“Boy.”

“Boy, come to me, boy.”

I am sitting in a kitchen chair balancing on the back two legs trying to keep myself from touching the wall behind me. I am facing west with the sun streaming in through the bronze screen door onto my face and my bare chest. I am skinnier than normal this summer and my mother continues to fill my plate at dinner with more food than I could eat even if I were starving. She thinks me to be sickly. I’m just not hungry.

“Boy.”

I had been ignoring it for about fifteen minutes when I knew that I had to get up and see where the voice was coming from.

Whale.

The orb sits in a nook of the huge oak tree that rests at the corner of the front yards eastward fence line. Dad and mom are sitting on the porch in the warmth of the summer sun drinking hard tea and holding hands. Brother is down at the lake fishing with Timothy Gurman; a local boy who lives on the next ranch to the west. Sister is lying fast asleep on a blanket in-between my mom and dad on the porch.

“Boy.”

It’s a loud but gentle whisper that carries with it a wind, a breeze.

“Here I am boy.”

I look at mom and dad. They hear nothing.

“Boy, I am here in the branches. Come to me.”

I look back one more time to see my parents with eyes closed and heads reclined back onto the chairs where they sit. I move slowly towards and tree keeping one eye on Whale and one eye on my parents.

Still no movement.

Everything quiet.

Am I deaf?

The grass is cool under my feet.

“Boy, are you listening?”

This is the first time Whale had ever asked me a direct question and I was confused because he had no mouth or ears or anything to justify a response from a sane person of sound judgment. Why should I, a sane young man, be talking to a glowing orb?

“I’m listening.” I was.