Mark U. Rye
A Modern Day Fable
His name was Mark Rye, well actually, he would introduce himself far more formally then his deeply creased jeans would have suggested. Mark U. Rye, he would grin, with a grin that sticks to you like warm oatmeal swallowed on an extra cold day. The U. was for Ulysses, a name he was extremely proud of and never did he have the hesitation that some folks have about their middle, and somewhat old fashioned names.
Mark called himself a communicator, although his busted old guitar hardly seemed to command that sort of respectability, at least not at first sight. But oh, that boy could make it sing with nine tongues and all of them golden!
I remember our first meeting, it was a cold October day, although Mark would never have said October, not him no, he would have described it as a cold day early in the sign of Scorpio, and thereby confound us all. He liked doing that, confounding people.
He called himself a communicator, but boy did he mix us up just about most of the time. Mixed the women up with his smile, the men up with his over sharp way of explaining things natural, like where apples come from.
One Day all of us was sitting in the backyard of my house, just sitting, eating apples from our old tree, and Mark up and says that the apple he’s holding is a wondrous fruit. Well now, we didn’t see nothing different about his fruit except maybe it was a bit greener, but it wasn’t the color he was after, because quick as you please he pulls out his penknife and cuts clear through it. Then he looks real intently at both halves in his hand. Finally, he looked up at us standing all around him and grins. He showed us both halves as if it was the most special apple in the world. Finally I asked what it was we were supposed to be looking at and he looks at me like I was pretty doggone dense not to notice. Then he says for me to look really close at the center of the apple. So I look and I just shake my head, so he points with his finger at him little tiny start in the center of one of the halves. Mark said that this star was real special. Told us that this star was called a pentacle, and it appears in each and every apple to remind everyone of its birthplace.
Well now, the idea that apples come from outer space was a wonderful notion, and everyone wished that they had been the one that had thought of that story, let me tell you. So after a moment, our friend Larry came out with the wisest thing he could think of , that old saying about ” An apple a day keeps the Doc…” Well, you know it unless you’re dumb or from anther planet, but when Mark heard it he laughed as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard, and never mind how old a proverb it was.
Maybe now’s the time I should explain Mark’s laugh. It had a loud booming sound to it that church bells can’t hardly match. When you heard it, well you just had to laugh too, anyway that proverb kind of got lost in the chuckle so’s to speak.
Mark U. Rye, he’s a memory and a half, that one, and never mind what was said after. He was a one and only with no fairy story of my sister’s can erase the man that he was!
Jeanie, my sister, is a half-wit half of the time, and a friggin genius the other half, and then there’s this middle half where she’s all dreamy. That’s right; she has one to many halves to suit me! Aw, but she’s my kid sister so what can you do? Then she went and got herself all dreamy about her singer and, I say her singer because she never referred to Mark as Mark, always as “Her Singer” like she owned him or something. Mark would just laugh but never argue. He always said she had squatters rights being as she was the one who found him!
She found him right and proper too, in a ditch that was a breadth and length of him twice around and then some. We figured it was a new trap that Farmer Johnson had dug to trap some critter in but doggone if the only thing it ever caught was Mark! As a matter of fact, Mark went and filled that hole up full of dirt the next day so that no one else would get trapped in it, as dangerous and as deep as it was…but I’m wandering in my thoughts and getting ahead of the story.
Anyway, Jeanie heard him yelling when she was out walking in the woods and helped him out with the aid of a stout tree branch and muscles she hadn’t used since she won the tug o’ war contest at the last years Easter picnic. Mark cleaned himself up at our house, which is when I got to meet him, and by that time he had charmed the pants ff, I mean, he had Jeanie pretty well under his thumb. I mean she was smitten!
Well, he asked us, real polite like, if he could sing for his supper and Mom said sure, but a good raking of the yard would have to be thrown in for good measure and that’s when we first heard that booming laugh of his. It rang all around the house until we clean forgot what it was that started it, and byt hat time, we were laughing so hard we didn’t care. Then Mom served up some chow.
Mark showed a bit peculiar color at the Virginia ham Mom served him, and dove into the peas and potatoes instead. Mom asked if he liked ham, and Mark said that she was just about the best cook he had ever seen but that he was a vegetarian, and so he’d stick to the vegetables if she didn’t mind. Well, Mom didn’t know what to make of that, so’s he frowned but didn’t argue. She just said a strong man like Mark should have all the protein he could get, an left it at that. I was real happy though, to take that slice of ham from off his plate. Mark gave Mom his widest smile and stuffed potatoes in his mouth ‘till he couldn’t move.
Everything was alright, because by that time Mom was charmed too! With Dad gone passed away a year before, she doted on this new man in her house almost as much as Jeanie did. Not that I minded, Mark took the attention off of me and I ate like a pig that night. Jeanie didn’t eat but a birds helping of potatoes and her piece of ham went untouched. I noticed right away that this was a sign of very good eating for me if this stranger stayed on, so I invited Mark to spend the night. Mom thought this was a great idea, and Jeanie fell over herself getting to the linen cupboard. Mark just smiled.
That smile of Mark’s was downright contagious. Soon, Mom and I couldn’t pass each other in the hall without a big grin springing to our faces. Jeanie said that she smiled so hard all the time that her jaw was beginning to hurt, and that her eyes kept smartin because of the way they would tear up after one of Mark’s jokes. Yes, he had us in a fine mood all the time back then, that’s for sure. That Mark was a one and that’s a fact.
He had us all worried early on in his stay though, fact I he’d talk on and on like a running hose one minute, then stare off into space the next, as if he was looking at something real hard, then start up talking again as if he had never even left off. We all thought that he had some kind of rare sickness that people get, like falling asleep while talking or such like that there, and so we’d wait and see if he’s start twitching or fall down or whatever, but he never did. He would just keep on talking more and more outrageously, until we all laughed. Finally we all decided not to start borrowing trouble, and just accept mark’s little peculiarities, of which there was more then one let me tell you! Oh, that Mark was a one and that’s a fact.
During the time he spent with us, I had more tales to tell about him than about the old gin mill down off Main Street , and that mill’s been around more than a hundred years. Folks even said it was once used a whor…I mean a house of ill-repute in the early 1900, but again I am getting away from the story. Let’s just say that everyday there was something new to tell about ‘ol Mark.
I recall one time, it was in the summer when Rick, (he’s an old timer around here) would drive his diaper service truck around to all the housewives doors to pick up and deliver. He has been doing this since I was in diapers and his truck ain’t no new thing to see or hear, if you want to get right down to it. Rick though, was very proud of his business it being profitable cause you never run out babies and they never run out of…well you know. He would ride around the town ringing his bell that let the wives know he was waiting out there for them. When they came out, he would sing his little jingle that advertised his business” Aphrodite’s Diaper Service!’ Well, if you ask me he sounded like an old crow cawing at the women, but they all got a big kick out of it and so did he.
The first time Mark heard this jingle of Rick’s; he almost wet himself laughing so hard! He laughed so hard; he fell right down in the street and started to roll around. All of us who were with him couldn’t help but laugh too. Soon, all of the guys, me, Tommy, Jimmy and Mark was laughing at Rick and his old dirt, diaper truck. Well, ol’ Rick got a bit huffy when he saw us there laughing like that, so he started yelling that “we hooligans” should with laughing and go home. When we kept on, Rick started ringing his bell louder and louder trying to drown us out. Well, this just mad us laugh all the harder and it made it so bad for Mark he couldn’t breathe an started turning red, laughing louder then Rick’s bell!
Finally, Rick was so mad he left his truck and came over to us to tell us to our faces. Well, that sure shut the rest of us up, but poor Mark just couldn’t stop that quickly. Rick thought Mark was ignoring him on purpose, so he stepped right over to where Mark was rolling around, and to our surprise kicked Mark right in the ribs!
Mark stopped laughing then, of course. For the first time since I met him, he had an angry look on his face. Can’t say as I blame him, as those boots of Rick’s had a hard sole to them and his ribs must have been aching. Marks stood up and faced Rick man to man, except for the fact that Mark towered over Rick, cause he had at least a head over him. I could see right away that Rick was quickly regretting having kicked such a tall drink of water as mark was. However, as quick as Mark’s anger had come, it went the same way. We got a second surprise that day when we heard Mark, who by the way had a hand on his aching left side, went and apologized to Rick.
Then Mark got real serious with Rick, and said that a name like “Aphrodite’s Diaper Service” was no fit name for a grown man to be using, and didn’t Rick think that his own name was good enough for a business without having to call on the Gods for help? Well, it was real obvious that Rick had never looked on the name of his business quite from that angle before. He mumbled that he would think on it, and he walked back and got in his truck. Mark watched him drive away with a funny look on his face and he was a bit thoughtful for the rest of the day. He was quieter than ever I’d seen him before, but later we jollied him out of his moodiness. I‘ll be darned if the following week we didn’t see Rick in a brand new spanking new truck with “Rick’s Diapers” in big bold letters on the side of it. Well, this got a grin from everyone who saw it, except Mark. He sort of smiled then and acted like he had forgotten the whole episode. Mark was a one and that’s a fact!
Talk about peculiar, you really can’t remember Mark without remembering those powerfully long boots of his, made all from some thick kind of cloth. Them were some tough sons of guns though, and although they looked more like legging’s then boots, they lasted from Summer to Winter without a tear. He’d always laugh when our own boots gave way to holes and such, in the heels and toes. He’d keep on saying that what we really needed, was a pair of his” handy, dandy all purpose lengthy leggings!” Well, we’d always answer him the same way by saying “no thank you, we didn’t want no boots what looked like girl’s stockings”.
He always gave the same answer that it was our loss. We’d have this conversation like it was a recording playing over and over again each time one of us needed a boot repair. We got so that we’d hold onto our boots’ they were raggedy, just so’s Mark would give us his opinion of our wastefulness. My, how we loved to hear that man talk.
He would go on and on telling us that those boots of his were cool in Summer and warm in winter, which they must have been, for he seemed real comfortable all the eitme. One time, we all went bathing and doggone if Mark didn’t walk right in the water with those miracle boots of his on! He said the water made his boots fit him to a “T”. We all laughed at him, as he waded all the way down the creek with a serious expression on his face, but not a stitch of clothing on his body, except those leggings of his! Yes, Mark Rye was a one and that’s a fact!
Mark could get away with things like that because he always seemed to have a good reason. He out logical you in any argument until giving in to him was the only way of ending it. He had a mind built for arguing and he could make even the silliest situation seem solemn or the most solemn situation seems silly if he put his mind to it. Mark and I sure got up to some very serious illness in our time, let me tell you. For instance, come late Fall, Mark would laugh and rake leaves up into a huge pile and jump into them, howling like some nitwit kid. Well, not five minutes later, he’d have me and Jeanie and all the guys following him into the leaves and laughing like fools too!
Yes, Mark was all kid sometimes, but he never did get in any trouble for it, cause he was too dang charming for that. For instance, he would come home from the fields all hot and sweaty, then without warning, before he hit the house, he would jump right into the creek, boots and all. Afterwards, he’d walk right into the house for supper, and Mom made no never mind about Mark’s damp boots under her table, though she would have had a holiday of yelling at me if I had done the same. However, that just don’t come close to the fun Mark and I had (and got away with) when we went moon shining!
Moon shining was Mark’s word for going out on hot summer nights and stealing my Uncle’s moonshine, then acting like fools as we climbed on top pf the big, grassy hill behind the barn. It was quite a climb for two fools let me tell you, and when we got to the very top Mark would grab me by the arm and we’d fall flat on our backs just looking up at the sky. Then Mark would get that big, wide open grin on his face, and take a giant swig of our jug. He would then pass it along over to me, and pretty soon we’d both be a grinning up at the big old moon in the sky. Then Mark would laugh and say that both of us were shining right back at the moon. Well, after we’d both drunk our share and then some, out of that jug, Mark would get a fool’s seriousness about himself and talk about his favorite subject- sky-messages. He used to tell me that stars keep sending messages to the earth and all we needed were proper messengers to decipher them. I let him prattle on, because no matter what foolishness he’d be talking, it sounded real reasonable and right, up there on that hill, what with the jug and all.
Mark would then talk on and on about Astrology, and I would listen, always trying to figure out just what he was getting at. He said only a few real Astrologists had the gift of star reading, and even then they didn’t quite have the wide picture. He’d say stars are always beaming done their messages to us like T.V. broadcasts, but no one can tune into them properly. After a few more sips from our friend the jug, he and I would stand, and start jumping up and down yelling at the sky, Change the station, change the station!” But the stars didn’t seem to mind, they just twinkled at our fun.
After that, we’d take a stroll through he woods, Mark would walk around an Old tree dribbling moonshine out of the jug and onto its trunk. Al l the time he was dribbling, he’d be whispering a chant that went something like” To the nature God’ and the older Gods and the younger Gods still, each has respect for the other, Blessed be , Blessed be” Then he would walk away from the woods, muttering to himself “Wisdom is wisdom, handed on down”. Well, the very first time I saw him do this, I teased him about being star struck, which I thought was a pretty funny thing to say. Mark though, looked at me kind of mean and told me to hush up about things I didn’t understand. After that I let him spill as much moonshine around tree trunks as he wanted to, because nobody wanted to make Mark mad, nobody!
Yes, the moon definitely captured Mark’s fancy one way or another.
Mark was building up his slow poke muscles too. Well, Mom had a way of making everyone get their exercise, and Mark just seemed to eat up chores as fast as she could think them up.
I appreciated Mark’s capacity for learning chores so quick, but he did show me and Jeanie up for being lazy, about most of the time. We couldn’t hold it against him though, Mark just couldn’t help that he did everything so quick; it was just so natural to him. One thing about him that he didn’t need any improvement, were the muscles in his legs. Those muscles were corded up so tight and had so much pull to them, that when he would race us he didn’t look so much like he ran, more like he unwound himself. He won every race, even the one against fast Kirby, and he is just about the fastest runner in two counties.
When Mark beat ol’ Kirby in his best race, the thirty yard sprint, we all thought we’d have Mark race at the Easter fair this year. Well, we were all mighty surprised when Mark said that Easter wasn’t the time to be out sporting around in the races, and besides he’d rather exercise his vocal cords and guitar strings instead. So then, we had to make it up pretty quick with Kirby and it took twenty dollars and a lot of flattery to make him take the name champion again. Even so, he didn’t speak to Mark before the fair, which was real uncharitable but nobody wanted to start the whole thing up again. I have to wonder if Mark wasn’t a bit hurt by the fact that no one had taken up for him. What with Kirby being so sensitive, and we all having to bet our last dollar on him winning the race, nobody thought too much about Mark’s feelings. He was pretty quiet though, there at the fair that day as I can recall.
By the time of the Harvest festival, all of this nonsense was long forgotten and Mark was in a fine mood! He’d go around singing and telling everyone that Harvest time was the time of the Mother. Well, we all respected his family’s memories, even though we didn’t halfway understand him sometimes. By this time he and Kirby had become good old pals and would often race around the woods trampling over logs and leaves and such like they was deer. Mark never did hold a grudge, and Kirby couldn’t very well hold the Easter race against him clear to November, so it all worked out and we had some fine races between those two.
All this time my sister is growing fonder and fonder of Mark. Seems he couldn’t do anything that wasn’t funny or bright or something, and she devoted a lot of time telling us to what degree he was on any particular day. I didn’t really mind, after all she couldn’t have picked a better man. All the girls liked Mark, but it was my sister that got him, which made me proud. Proud as any brother could be of his kid sister, anyway. She never pawed at him either, like those other lame brains that followed him around. No, Mark and Jeanie would just sit and hold hands, while talking softly with their heads together. Mark would just say that he and Jeanie were “Boon Companions” because Jeanie was such a boon to him. That was all Mark would say about their relationship though, it was what it was, and what it was, was between them, and that was that. They were a real close pair though and they didn’t get on each other nerves like some couples. It was nice that way.
The most peaceful time we had at home was when Mark sang to us at night after supper. We’d all gather around, listening to the old songs that he’d wind up singing, after he’d finished with all of our favorites. His favorite types of songs were ballads. We had never heard of most of the songs that he sang for us, but they all sounded like stories set to music. Jeanie’s favorite was the one about Atlantis and how everyone lived in palaces like the kings or Gods. My favorite was about an old, old battle that happened at the beginning of the world. He would sing the stories in such detail that you could have sworn he had seen them all first hand. Mom would say he made them all up on the spot out of his head, because Mark could tell a tall story quicker and better than anyone else. Mark would always shake his head and say that every song was a legitimate ballad and he could no more make up those stories than fly to the moon. Then Mom would laugh at his sorrowful expression and tell him to “git flying!”
Thant Mark was a one and that’s a fact!
It was close to Christmas when it happened. We were in the woods cutting down the perfect tree, Mark had said it was “so symmetrical that it brightened the eye and made the heart weep, so let’s axe it!” Jeanie and I laughed at his fun; everyone else was too darned cold to laugh. They just stood there with smoke blowing out of their mouths in short gusts, cause they were so impatient to be inside and warming up by the fire. So I picked up the axe, but my fingers were so stiff from the cold that as I swung it towards the tree it flew out of my hands and directly at Mark.
He jumped out of the way so quick that I was sure the axe had missed him. Then I heard him yelp and Jeanie started screaming at me to do something quick. I looked to where Jeanie was pointing and saw that the ankle of Mark’s boot was turning red where the axe had bit into it. Everyone gathered round so close to Mark, that I could barely see anything but him hopping around. He was also muttering things that Janie shouldn’t been hearing, not as I blamed him under the circumstances. Then, all of a sudden Mark turned real white. I ran over to him and quickly put my shoulder underneath his arm. Jeanie took hold of the other arm and swung it around her neck. Both of us were real scared that Mark would pass out from the pain before we could get him home. I felt horrible the way I had cut Mark and I tried to make him as comfortable as possible all the way home by taking as much pressure of his foot as I could. He was a big man and heavy as lead even though he tried his darndest to help us out by hopping along. I could hear Jeanie breathing real heavy with the effort and I could tell she was trying very hard not to cry in front of Mark. I know though that she was real scared about the amount of blood he was losing all the way back. Finally we got home, but as soon as we got him through the door Mark raced, hell for leather, toward the bathroom and locked himself in.
Well, there Mark was, in the bathroom yelling for everyone to keep away and leave him alone while Mom was busy asking everyone questions about what happened. While there I was trying real hard to forget it was my clumsiness that had gotten us into this mess. So for a moment, I didn’t even notice that Janie had gone missing.
We all waited in the living room, while Mom served us up some hot chocolate saying there was nothing for it but to let Mark fix up his own ankle in peace. She said that he was smart enough to know how serious it was himself, and if he needed us she was sure he’d let us know. It was after everything was more or less quite that I heard Jeanie pounding on the outside bathroom window and yelling at mark to unlock the door. What she saw through that window I’ll never know but a minute later she let out a yell like someone had hit her and came running into the living room.
The story that she told us when she came into the room was the nearest thing to impossible we had ever heard. She said, she was looking in the window trying to get Mark's attention so that he’d open the door, when she saw him unlacing his boots. He was slowly wiping the blood from his ankle when she saw it and started to holler. What she saw attached to his ankle was something that looked just the shape of a seagull’s wing and it moved ever so slowly as he wiped around it. This is the thing that scared her the most, the fact that he didn’t move it with his hand, it just moved, like it was fluttering all by itself.
Well, she yelled so loud that Mark heard her and looked right into her eyes. She said that he looked real surprised at seeing her there and then he looked away, sort of sad like. She then left the window right away to come in and tell us about it. Well, after hearing her story we all ran to the bathroom but the door opened up easy when we tried it. It was empty when we looked inside, except for his boots which were still on the floor. My sister went it and picked up the boot with the blood still on the ankle, while me and the boys went out to find Mark. We figured he would have to be pretty steamed to be walking out in the cold weather barefoot and wanted to find him pretty quick before he did any more damage to that ankle of his.
Well, we searched everywhere for him, finally spreading out and going into the woods. When we got back, Jeanie was holding his boot and crying while Mom was talking to her about how Mark would be walking in the door any minute. Still, Jeanie was holding that one boot like it was a baby and crying so much that Mom began to worry about her. Finally, Mom pulled the boot away from her in order to get her to stop crying over it, and it was then that something dropped out of the inside of it.
It was a tiny, white feather.
That was a year ago, and we never did see that boy again. He left his guitar here, but no one has played it and so it just sets in the corner of the living room, gathering dust. It’s Christmas again, which has got me remembering ol’ Mark.
Jeanie, well, she’s real quite these days. She gets startled at the flapping of wings, any kind from duck to sparrow, and spends a lot of time looking out at the stars. Watching for messages, she says.
Yes, that Mark U. Rye was a one, and that’s a fact.
By : Carolyn Wolfe