Helena

Helena

By David E Feaman







         HELENA, THE MISTY night folds over for you like ghost soldiers crawling through shadows.

         What do I have without you?  The thoughts that plague me tear the very soul from out my body as I sit leaning on your headstone.

         A headstone is all that’s left of you, my Helena... A slab of marble chiseled with the inscription: 

         HELENA STAUBB, DEVOTED WIFE, BORN: 184-, DIED 186-. 

         As cold a marbled slab to touch as the chill of the night on my skin, through my body.  Six feet beneath my weary bones and that cold slab of marble lies your earthly remains.  How unfair God can be.  How bitterly unfair to have a husband bury his woman.  How unfair and shameful and ugly! 

         Yes!

         Ugly, even! 

         The warmth of the whiskey that spreads in my sleepy veins dies away with the chill I feel as quickly as it comes.

         These rows and rows of headstones, darling, most have seen their share of desperate husbands, desperate wives, pressed against them as though the very last vestiges of life at night when nobody would hold them.  In those desperate hours, when nobody would tell them that they’re beautiful.  At night, alone in our big house, nobody loves me, kisses me, gives a good goddamn.  How many of those desperate husbands and wives, leaned against the headstones, saw the same apothecaries?  How many felt the nip of that bug crawling down their chests?  How many are here, right now, beside the ones they grieved?



         The lamp shows over the headstone, Helena... It’s old Rogers checking for grave-robbers.

         The light passes over without hesitation. 

         Why? 

         I’m leaning on you.  Against you.  My hand fondles the clefts of the inscription on your headstone.

         More whiskey.  Colder and colder, the night drops slowly into a pool of ice spreading around me.  Your marble mouth on mine, so smooth and perfect and cold, don’t leave me, Helena!  I’m begging, my love!  Stay, beside me, on my hands, on my mouth, under my legs, stay!  Remind me that once you kissed me with real lips!  Remind me that once you held my hands with real hands!  Remind me that once we shared our bodies...

         Now, the winds that raise the ghosts around us, Helena, are damning winds and impish ghosts! 

         One bottle fell, another bottle lifts... And I was always your toy.  Your doll to dress up and parade around town.  In your twenties and a girl at heart, I was always your fool, your monkey, your toy, your everything, your everything... Your absolute everything.  Without you I have nowhere to go.  Without you, only the empty bottles fill me with the promise that you gave so generously in your life.  You, child of a woman, Helena!  You, lover, companion, friend, Helena.  You... My wife.  My wife. 

         

         I would have stood forever in the rain during your funeral, Helena.

         These very soils, this very headstone, would have marked my final resting place, as well.

         Were I a wiser man, they would have.

         Were I a better man, they would have.

         Were I a weaker man, I would have succombed to the lunger disease that took you from me and turned me into a ghoul, resting on the headstone of a departed lover.  A ghoul, yes, in form and in mind.  Shunned by the town.  Does it matter, Helena?  Does it matter what the apothecary said?  Does it matter what bottle I drink from?  Will it ever matter that the desperate ones that clung to these headstones may spend eternity drifting over the night in a fog of faces and shapes?  Ask me, Helena, from six feet beneath me how these spectres cry out in the wind, rattle about the trees, lost, freeze with the moonless skies!  Ask me and I’ll paint you the picture...

         More whiskey.

         Off in the distance the church bells toll the witching hour and the storm that approaches comes for the desperate ones, Helena.

         The trees that shade us that must have bore the wieght of those desperate ones now cackle and laugh in these terrifying moments! 

         What do I care, holding your marbled skin to my sinking body, what the apothecary said...

         What do I care? 

         What do I care when soon I’ll lie beside you...



         The bottle that slips from my hand, rolls over the turned soils, over you, Helena, and stops.

         The chill over me turns to numbness and I clench onto your marbled headstone!  This is the moment that I refuse to release! 

         Damn the apothecary! 

         I’ve stood too long in the absence of my Helena!  I’ve suffered too long in the wake of your death!  I’ll not soil this moment by releasing that vestige of life to which I now cling!  I clung to you in life, my lover, my companion, my wife, Helena, and now I will cling to you in death!  I’m ready!  The fogs draw over me, sprawls over us, and in those fogs I see a face... A beautiful face of blue eyes and dark hair and lips the hue of the melting sunset!  My Helena, you’ve come for me in the last of my hours!  Hold me in your spectral arms and kiss me a goodnight kiss to last forever as I sleep beside you!  Tell me you love me again, Helena!  Tell me that you love me.  Tell me that you... Tell me...



         “Just found him like this.”  Old Rogers said to Sheriff Bills.  “Strangest thing.”

         “Well, Billy Staubb was a right strange fellow, you ask most.”

         “But to die holding a headstone.  Seems odd to me.  Even for Billy.”

         “I suppose it’s not that odd anyway, old Rogers.”  Said Sheriff Bills kneeling for a better glimpse of the corpse. 

         “What makes you say that, Sheriff?”

         “She was all he had.”

         With that the Sheriff called his men to pull Billy’s arms from the headstone where there were bound.  It took nearly breaking his arms at the elbows.  It was as though he had become the very headstone to which he clung.