chantpleure

Paul Shepherd addressed the great masses of nobody from the veranda on the edge of town. It once belonged to a house, which once belonged to a man, who was once a boy with big blue eyes that most ladies found endearing. That man is now dead. Nobody noticed, as mostly everyone else was dead, too. The ones that were not spent the day foraging, and nitpicking, and digging great graves for happened-upon bodies. Such is life.

He spoke great words unto the air. They were big and commanding and powerful, and he liked the way they resonated deeply over the great valleys and forges that once was town. The remains of the city were a giant, steel spider's web. The spider had long gone. Tiny limbs and faces and other such human paraphernalia stuck out at queer little angles from the mess of rivets and girders. There was a children's book that told the story of a teddy bear that finds a cat in a tree. Somewhere in there was the twisted lips of a mother that was reading it aloud in a pleasant soprano to her drooling, wild little baby, but was cut off quite abruptly by the faint whistle of incoming bombs. She, too, was dead. So was her baby, and the baby's brother, and their neighbors, and the priest and his congregation. Everybody was locked up tight in the grip of the great spider's web, and nobody was going anywhere. Such is life.

Meanwhile, a sermon of words and feelings filled the air. It was Paul, of course. He made great big constructs of sentences. He liked the way his voice sounded ghoulish and ghostly in the hollows of the spider web. A thousand divorced little hands clapped silently in the breeze as he threw his arms high up in great gusto; he was the pinnacle of righteousness in the great aftermath of the world.

He said:

"We stand now upon the dawning of a new era--an era in which all men are truly created equal and precious and divine. The great disaster from the skies has delivered unto us a chance of redemption. A chance to smile against the great travesties of mankind, and show to God that we, His lowly servants, are deserving of this most precious gift..."

And so on, all the while pumping his fists enthusiastically. He excited himself with this passionate discourse. A stale wind blew through the spider web tangle, and the open hands clapped in their hollow, silent little ways. Paul heard a thunderous applause, saw a great field of brightly colored faces cheering him on, agreeing with each and every word that fell out of his clumsy lips.

A group of passersby carrying their children in a wheelbarrow stopped to listen. The father rested his weight upon the burned out husk of a tree, jumped a little as it began to crumble under his gaunt frame. His wife lingered vacantly behind him. Her face was a primrose. She seemed neither concerned nor bothered by the theatrics on the veranda above her. Instead, her eyes darted daftly from this to that, never really stopping or focusing. Her pallid, shriveled little lips formed heavy words that didn't go anywhere. She was a sight, with her rolling eyes and her chattery lips. Nobody could hear her, not even her husband, who was quite enthralled by the magnificent spectacle above him. Had he been listening, he would have heard her singing "Once there was a way to get back homeward, once there was a way to get back home..."

It was the only thing that made sense to her, and that was okay.

Meanwhile, the raving speaker continued.

"...and hereupon this field of battle, where once a great city stood in testament to the greatness of man, a great rubble sleeps. Beneath this mound of dust and rock and bone there lies the heart of mankind, that undying soul of the world, fingers and teeth and eyeballs and hair, all of it magnificent and sad and brilliant. A myriad display of The Creator's great design, laid to waste by itself in that sad discourse which is war, that rampant, unnecessary flash of cannonade and swan cry of the bugler..."

And again the breeze blew, and again the thousand myriad hands that stuck out of the great spider's web clapped, and clapped. The man with the barrow looked up pathetically from his vantage on the dull, gray earth.

"Shut up, you twat," he cried up to the lunatic on the veranda. He took his wife by her skinny little wrist. Paul couldn't see it from way up there, but the man's own bony fingers fit like a bracelet, and the whole parade of skin and bones wheeled off like a sigh across the burned out prairie.

Paul's arms pumped emphatically to the rhythm of his own crazy cadence. In his mind, the great congregation stood before him, wet-eyed and beautiful. The women fanned themselves with ornate fans, and held their children close to their bosoms in that way that women seldom did. The Holy Ghost was alight atop each pathetic, miserable human being amassed there. Everyone was a perfect angle, tongues of flame and long white robes. He preached about that great kingdom that is heaven. He clapped his hands for effect. The man and his bony wife and his skeletal babies heaped up like timber were rambling away, the only living souls beside the madman in the pulpit. The poor lady looked back as they sauntered away, teary-eyed at the bleak pile of rubble that once was home, and comfort; now only a pile of metal and mortar and brick and a thousand hands clapping to the wind and the maniac preacher.

As they disappeared, a squad of soldiers arrived in the back of a jeep. They climbed out of their vehicle and surveyed the sad display of architecture so mercilessly rearranged before them. The man with the most stripes said "Tsk-tsk," and the man with the gold on his shoulders told him to cork it promptly. He did so. After gawking, the man with the golden shoulders determined there was nothing they could do here, that there was nobody worth saving at all, and piled back into the jeep. The man with the stripes pointed at Paul, way up on his veranda. He had a face that asked "What about that one?" The officer shook his head in that simple way that says, "No, that man is a lunatic, and he's better off here than with us." Such is life.

The sun set on the spider web. It glittered blithely in the evening sun. Evening dew began to settle on the joints and rivets and junctures of steel and flesh. The hands stopped clapping; the wind had changed direction.

Only Paul remained, atop his great Veranda. His arms still moved passionately up and down, side to side. He seemed to be sweeping away the ghost of death with his great sermon. Paul looked like a miracle man, spouting and preaching and praying and lifting his seraphic voice up to God. This was the great chantepleure of Paul Shepherd. The great hymnal of man.

All the tracks led out of town, away from Paul and the clapping hands and the storybooks and the mothers. This was not the place for haunting; it had ghosts enough. There was only Paul, and his words, and the bones and the steel, and the great choral swell of the cicadas as they emerged from the soil. A thousand voices crying out at once:

"What the hell was all that?"