from The Tales
preface
Once upon a recent time, a very powerful nation attempted to destroy another nation via a military mission deceptively named Operation Sleep. The very powerful nation succeeded, but for a single inexplicable survivor, known to those unmarked as The Lone Survivor. This book includes his story and many versions of what may or may not be the same story.
The Lone Survivor’s Tale
I emerged out of the collapsed earth. My love—his hands—gone. I towed his life’s work—the marionette wires, cracked wooden faces, bloody hair.
the saving:
A fairy Tale
Air-coats.
The air was colder in the days before the soldier came, so only those with the slowest metabolisms were not wearing coats when his stories began. Many had just returned home from work or school or their secret affairs.
It is believed that beavers carry into the water so much air entangled in their coats that, if left undisturbed at the bottom of a lake, they can thrust their noses into their fur and breathe for some time. The people, of course, did not have fur, but they had winter coats.
Since the event, some villagers have been spotted coming up out of the ground.
the fireworks engineer’s Tale
Pyrotechnics illustrate power. The power of a country to keep its citizens enthralled and in thrall. The power of a country to flaunt an impression of its own place in the world. The power of a country to fuck with another country.
Though it’s unlikely the Lone Survivor will be watching the holiday fireworks this year, he might more readily accept his attackers’ dominance if he sat down and beheld the fiery bursts: squealing pig cake, horsetail, willow, mine.
the archeologist’s Tale
What the soldier left.
Computers, bicycles, family photographs, pet birds, diaries, plates of half-eaten food, threadbare pajamas, little boxes of extra buttons, travel guides, chopsticks, game systems, power tools, picture books, flowering plants, bank cards, trophies, underthings, new toothbrushes for future guests, cleaning supplies, combs with hair stuck to the teeth, the current day’s newspaper open to the crossword, an afghan made by someone’s mother, cigarette lighters, holy books, freezers of meat, sweaters with holes in the writing elbow, muffin tins, junk mail, wine cellars, draft snakes, open notebooks, pocket knives, commemorative goblets, old batteries and light bulbs, handmade aprons, half-strung guitars, last summer’s preserves, watering cans, obsolete phones and their chargers, finger paintings on the refrigerator, holiday decorations, monogrammed towels, prescription drugs, coffee grinders, running shoes, lotions for dry skin, balms for chapped lips, gels for frizzy hair, salt shakers, stuffed bears, pruning shears, terrariums, candlesticks, shopping bags on hooks, unpaid bills, playing cards, drawers of winter clothes, bookends, decorative pillows, snack foods, family jewels, sports equipment, dog leashes, cat boxes, rodents in cages, spare keys, dull scissors, umbrellas, vitamins, diet soft drinks, mixing bowls, dictionaries, souvenir keychains, wooden blocks, suitcases, slipcovers, bath scales, unwashed takeout containers, shoe polish, spice racks.
And the owners of these things.
the workers’ Tale
In the ginger rooms at Comfort Industries, workers have been given a single task they may carry out according to their talents.
The botanically inclined among them harvest rhizomes from the rows of ginger pots in filtered sunlight. Cobblers sit at a long table and stitch slipper soles from peel. And in a small kitchen, cooks strain fiber from syrup, simmering for lozenges and chews.
Assigned to console the Lone Survivor, they send him packages of their handiwork weekly.
THE CLAIMS ADJUSTER’S TALE
And what if the Lone Survivor wants a child? The Total Loss Replacement clause in his contract applies only to pets and human appurtenances. Pets are to be replaced according to the following criteria: species, breed, size, color, temperament. Even if the Lone Survivor did not have a pet, he is entitled to one as a “reasonable damage.”
The Lone Survivor’s Tale
I did, in fact, have two cats, but I haven’t revealed this to the claims adjusters who seem so concerned with fixing the physical terms of my prior life.
On the property damage claim, I may say, instead, that I had a dog of such uncertain origin that I’ll accept any brown thing between 30 and 50 pounds.
the therapist’s Tale
The Lone Survivor says to me, “Some person has injured my life.” I say to the Lone Survivor, “You have injured your life. Only you can fix your life.”
The Lone Survivor’s Tale
I draw his eyeglasses, our best meals, his fingers working floss into the grooves between his teeth.
I keep a diary. I get bogged down in the details.
Old shoes, a bare light bulb: I take pictures of my feelings and believe I have trouble getting past the literal.
I am building up my muscles now. I outline with a purple marker the sweat stains I’ve transferred to the floors on which I perform my repetitions.
I am trying all of the therapeutic arts.
The Lone Survivor’s Tale
Those in charge have asked me to devise a memorial. I quickly reject statues, obelisks, all forms monumental in their ideology.
Worse still, I imagine children visiting a memorial museum to experience sensory simulations of atrocity or to reenact victimhood bodily.
I consider, instead, a constellation of small clothes, each with the name of one dead inscribed on a pocket or along a hem. These clothes I would string through a woodland and arrange by meaningful adjacency. A woman’s name might flutter near her partner’s, their children’s, her co-workers’.
I need a memorial that will disintegrate over time, grey and fray as most of the dead did not have a chance to.
Jessica Bozek is the author of The Tales (forthcoming from Les Figues) and The Bodyfeel Lexicon (Switchback, 2009), as well as several chapbooks: Squint into the Sun (Dancing Girl), Other People’s Emergencies (Hive), Touristing (Dusie), and cor·re·spond·ence (Dusie). She runs the Small Animal Project Reading Series and lives with her small family in Cambridge, MA.