PNW Bad Hemingway - End of the Dark times

[Wadin' Boot]

The End of the Dark Times

BY Earnest Boot

It was the end of the dark time. This was good. The accordion music was playing and the sun rose from among the rocks and mud. He tied the fly made of the rabbit strip. The fly was simple and he tied it with the light on. With the lights on the dark time ended. When the light went off he knew the dark time would come back. He did not like the dark time. He did not like the fly he was tying. He turned the light off.

In Baquera he met the old man. He was an old man. His hair was white now because he had seen many bad times. And many rising suns. His skin looked like mud. His knuckles looked like rocks. His hair blew in the wind and once he had a beard like a goat, but not now. He had the beard of a man who had lost his beard in a time worse than this.

"If you tie the fly while drinking Pernod it becomes a bad fly." The old man said.

He drank the Pernod. Pernod is green. Many good times were green. Then with water Pernod turns white like the old man's hair. His hair also looked like a light bulb when it is turned on. He did not have expensive hair. Expatriots had expensive hair. Pernod is not expensive like Absinthe or an expatriot. He thought of the expatriot who looked like a boy but was a woman. He met her in Paris. She ate snails and she had hair. The same expatriot also looked like a bullfighter he saw die while fighting the Falangists. None of them looked like the old man though. The old man did not look like Pernod. The old man was not green. But when you put water in the Pernod, then it looked like his hair. The old man had white hair. He did not have a beard.

"If you turned the light on it would be a good fly." The old man said that too. The old man said that when it was the dark time.
"A good fly catches a good fish."
"Yes" he said. It was hard to argue with the old man. The old man only spoke truth. Sometimes spit came out of his mouth too. One time pulpo and sardine flew out of the old man's mouth because he laughed. That was a good time. When the old man laughed and did not choke on pulpo.

The old man had caught many fish and he knew where the Pilar was moored. It was not moored in Baquera though. Baquera was in the foothills. Only a fool moors the Pilar in Baquera.The old man stood up, He walked like an old man walks when they are in the dark and cannot see well.

Then the old man crashed into the radio and then there was no more accordion music. The old man groaned like a bullfighter with a horn in his spleen. Or like a Falangist who is shot by a Fascist. He groaned a second time, though this time like a Fascist shot by a Falangist. Both of them were idiots. The Falangist and the Fascist. Because both of them did not know about the light. With light they might have seen they were on the same side. The dark side. He did not care if Falangists shot Fascists. The old man was not a Fascist. He was not a Falangist either.

He cared about the old man. The old man could have seen more with the light on. Even with the sun rising, the light on would have ended the dark time and the old man would not have fallen and the accordion music would still be playing.

The old man had knocked over a basin full of water. The water soaked into the woolen blankets that were also rugs. The rugs were also blankets. Blankets that smelled of wet wool or wet rug. An upturned basin lay on the blankets. You could not see the water. The blankets were dark. They were not green like Pernod or white like Pernod and water or the old man's hair. They were not the old man's blankets. They were his rugs. The wet wool smelled like bandages and mud and rocks. The old man was rolling around on the blanket that was also a rug clutching his spleen. You could tell it was the old man because with the sun rising you could see his white hair. White hair is hard to hide in a background of dark blankets wet with rug water. You could also hear the old man who groaned like a partisan stuck on barbed wire. The old man, the radio, the blankets, the rugs all smelled of wet wool.

"Please, turn on the light." Said the old man.

When he said it his mouth moved. Though his mouth was still dark. There was no beard to hide his lips. His lips did not look like the lips of a goat. He had seen many expatriots that looked like goats. He looked at the fly. It was a badly tied fly. It was dark. Made of rabbit strip. Goat strip would have worked also he thought. He thought about fishing the bad fly. He drank the pernod which was white and cheap. He leaned back in the chair. The chair creaked and popped. The radio was now on the wet rug and smelled like a woolen blanket that is soaked with water. The radio was smashed. He could not hear the accordion nor could he hum the tune that once played.

He did not like people who hummed accordion tunes.

He leaned his good arm back behind his head. He turned on the light. The dark time ended. His dark fly was white. The sun continued to rise. He drank more Pernod. He would fish soon. The old man pulled himself up with his arms. He leaned over and looked at the radio, and then at the fly.

"That is a bad fly."
"But this is the good time."
"The end of the dark time"

They nodded together. You could not argue with the old man.

 

[Xoxo]

Oh i hope you do more stories in Bad Hemingway style @Wadin' Boot . I remember when you did this on the old forum. I was already laughing with the description of the old man.

“He did not like people who hummed accordion tunes.” Hahahahaha!
Good way to start the morning! Thank you.

 

[Pink Nighty]

He had the beard of a man who had lost his beard in a time worse than this.

Mr. Bootingway you have outdone yourself

 

[Wadin' Boot]

With the light on the blankets were very wet. They were not expensive blankets. The expatriot was expensive and did not have blankets. The expatriot had a big Chicago name and came from old money. She had a forehead like a Lake Michigan cliff. There is a difference between a big name with no blankets and and old man with blankets that were also rugs. He thought if he ever had a big name he would also have blankets. Maybe he would have rugs too. He too would be an old man with blankets and maybe rugs. He wanted a white beard like a lion. Not like a goat. The bad time is when you have no blankets. When you have no beard. He could not decide if it was the bad time if you had no blankets or the dark time if you had blankets and they were wet and smelled like sheep.

"You can always dry a wet blanket" said the old man who held his spleen.

The old man was right.

If he had a blanket he would want his favorite things on it. Sardines. Pulpo. Marlin. Bullfighters. The Pilar. Albarino. The Expatriot with a forehead like an iceberg. Not the real things. Sardines and Pulpo do not go on blankets. The expatriot was the exception. She could go on the blanket. But not sardines. Not a marlin. Instead he thought of the fabric pieces cut and stitched onto the blanket. Sewn with catgut by the old man. Sewn carefully like when he mends the nets. The nets that also would dry in the sun like the wet rugs and the radio that used to play the accordion music. The old man would sew pieces of canvas and wool cut from the uniforms of the dead Falangists. The colored felt cut from the caps of dead Fascists. His mother would call it a quilt. Though he would call it a blanket.

 

[Old Man]

Quit picking on an old man. They get grippy when they get mad.

 

[Xoxo]

@Wadin' Boot …Albariño is kind of running theme for your Hemingway stories! Hahaha…

Hahahaha!!!!
“ He could not decide if it was the bad time if you had no blankets or the dark time if you had blankets and they were wet and smelled like sheep.

"You can always dry a wet blanket" said the old man who held his spleen.

The old man was right.”

I feel like the second sentence should read …said the old man who HAD NO spleen.

 

[Dustin Chromers]

Removing a spleen is no easy task to get right even in the operating room back in Madrid. The task was now made doubly difficult in the mud hut with limited access to sterile tools and the blankets that smell like goat. The old man's hands were steady as he mucked about the incision. His fingers searching and probing, looking for the good spleen. "Not there", he thought as he continued his probing. His trusty rusty scalpel doing it's work as it had done so many times before. The scalpel made him think of other times, the bad times, the times when war torn men were screaming in agony at their mortality splayed out across his table in all their crimson glory. The guts of the men also smelled like goat. Was it the guts, the goat smell, or the old rusty scalpel that made these memories flood back. These were the bad memories of the bad times. His memory was good but the bad memories made him feel badly. Not as bad as he felt in the time of the bad times but bad enough to know this was not the good times. Oh how he longed for the good times. To feel the warm glow of the good times upon his soul again. It had been so long he wondered if he would know the good times again. The spleen now naked and afraid on the table before him was ready to be severed from the patient. Certainly this was the bad times for this man. To lose a spleen is a terrible loss. Not as bad as a testicle but bad. As he stitched the spleenless man closed he pondered the spleen and how much it resembled a testicle. He had to work fast. The goat smell was becoming too much behind his mask and it made him hasty with his finishing stitches. Too much time had passed and he needed fresh air free from the goat smell, spleen, and wet blankets.

 

[_WW_]

Removing a spleen is no easy task to get right even in the operating room back in Madrid. The task was now made doubly difficult in the mud hut with limited access to sterile tools and the blankets that smell like goat. The old man's hands were steady as he mucked about the incision. His fingers searching and probing, looking for the good spleen. "Not there", he thought as he continued his probing. His trusty rusty scalpel doing it's work as it had done so many times before. The scalpel made him think of other times, the bad times, the times when war torn men were screaming in agony at their mortality splayed out across his table in all their crimson glory. The guts of the men also smelled like goat. Was it the guts, the goat smell, or the old rusty scalpel that made these memories flood back. These were the bad memories of the bad times. His memory was good but the bad memories made him feel badly. Not as bad as he felt in the time of the bad times but bad enough to know this was not the good times. Oh how he longed for the good times. To feel the warm glow of the good times upon his soul again. It had been so long he wondered if he would know the good times again. The spleen now naked and afraid on the table before him was ready to be severed from the patient. Certainly this was the bad times for this man. To lose a spleen is a terrible loss. Not as bad as a testicle but bad. As he stitched the spleenless man closed he pondered the spleen and how much it resembled a testicle. He had to work fast. The goat smell was becoming too much behind his mask and it made him hasty with his finishing stitches. Too much time had passed and he needed fresh air free from the goat smell, spleen, and wet blankets.

Well...that's one way to git yer bait.