Listen ...Garden of Heaven: An Odyssey

GARDEN OF HEAVEN: AN ODYSSEY
by Malcolm R. Campbell
Available in Ebook Format

Prologue

“A man is always prey to his truths.

Once he has admitted them,

he cannot free himself from them.”

--Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

--Káyiopok, my little bear cub, Grandmother said, let us walk down to the creek on this late afternoon of your tenth birthday so I may tell you the secret of the universe.

Clementine Mae ‘Katoya’ Gordon claimed she was older than the speed of light and twice as fast. Before David could cut another corner piece from the devil’s food birthday cake with caramel icing stored negligently under tin foil in the centre of the kitchen table, she was already scattering the barred chickens through the orange sunset splashed across the back yard.

The screen door slammed behind him as he ran to catch up. She spun around the clothes line pole and looked at him sharply.

--What’s that? She snapped. A cherry bomb in your back pocket?

--Oops.

--Oops has become your favourite word, she said, striding through the tall grass toward the creek that connected the ranch and the high country with sacred water. You’re walking in a slump like Harry Carter after drinking a case of Great Falls shellac. There is no need to pretend you have not become taller than your tiny grandmother.

--Your grey hair is taller than you are, Grandmother.

She took his hand.

--Puhsapot, she said with laughter in her voice. Come here and don’t distract my attention with my vanity. It will be my downfall for I will one day trip over it.

Katoya rubbed her nose absently as they sat down next to each other on a flat slab of limestone that jutted out over the creek. She gazed at him without blinking as she removed the wood pin from her leather barrette, and waited until her hair had settled around them like a lace shawl, golden in the light.

--The twinge in my nose has announced tomorrow’s rain. I didn’t know when I got it that my crooked nose would be good for anything.

--Do you remember how it happened? He asked.

--As a matter of fact I do, she said. I was midwifing an inexperienced ewe through a difficult delivery and got kicked. Quick as a blind man’s wink: a broken nose.

--Did it hurt?

--Like hell, she said. But enough about my nose, did you rise at the snap, crackle and pop of dawn and hide a playing card among the sheep? she asked.

He had chosen the king of spades and had hidden it well.

--Yes, Grandmother.

--Then we are ready, she said.

She often said ‘my little bear cub, the world is not what it seems to be’ and then created grand delights of magic before his eyes, images that came and went, birds that materialized from the pockets of her coats, clouds that spun into shapes fantastic, voices that called his name inside his head, and flutes that sang crying songs that drew wolves down from the upper range.

--Ready, he said, and her eyes upon him were soft and deep and grey and settled amongst the crow's feet tracks on her face like young birds.

--You will return to school soon and your teachers will extract books from important shelves and point to one page and another, drawing your attention to facts. These facts will serve you well when you set out to accomplish the lesser tasks of the world.

--What about the greater tasks of the world, he asked.

Grandmother reached over and mussed his hair, laughing loud enough, he thought, to frighten the box elder leaves and rattle the screen door.