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Two Stories
by John Staples


A Field of My Choosing

It was a tale of good. It was a tale of evil. A tale of good and evil, then, except better than other tales of the same theme, even the really old ones everyone likes. More powerful too, and more everything. Also a tale of honour and the moral choices involved when honour plays a part into the bargain.

Virgil did not know where to turn. He knew he was in a tale of good, evil, honour, and moral choices, but he didn’t know much more than that. He did not, for example, know if he was one of those good ones or one of those evil bad ones. He hoped good, if good was winning, and he hoped bad, if the converse was true. It was also a tale of truth. Virgil did not share the concerns of the writer, me. He did not care really whether he was good or bad as long as he was winning and not getting his fingernails pulled out or something. Which is understandable, as I told Virgil, but not ideal. For Virgil was a pragmatist, which is bad if you’re evil, fine only if you’re good.

One of the things that was supposed to happen was that Virgil was supposed to meet up with an ugly dragon. He was supposed to meet it in a forest of my choosing and fight it until he had essentially killed it. But instead of essentially killing it, Virgil merely subdued it, which was boring.

Certainly, there was a woman. A girl, actually. A young girl-woman, woman-girl. When Virgil caught sight of her, in a field of my choosing, he didn’t know if she was good or bad. I did, but he didn’t. It was his thing to figure out by himself. For it was his epic journey, and therefore not for me to judge or intervene, until it came time to kill him, which is my job whether he was good or bad, bad or good.

So Virgil saw the girl for the first time in a field. It was a field of poppies too, very pretty. Anyway, Virgil saw that the girl had a lot of hair and it was blonde. He put two and two together and concluded the girl-woman was good, basically, basically good. Still unsure of whether he himself was good or bad, Virgil decided he would be good because he wanted the girl. He would be good to the girl-woman, and then she would be good back, whether she was basically good or basically bad. “Even a bad woman likes someone to be good to her,” Virgil guessed. “I can tell at a glance I am good for her. And I can tell that she is good for me. For one thing, I don’t see anyone else around here.” Then, just then, another woman appeared suddenly in front of Virgil, about an inch or so in front of his nose, so that he could not ignore or not see her. He was being stymied at every turn, by me, the author. “Virgil,” the new woman said. She was not particularly attractive. That is to say that whereas the first girl-woman had plenty of hair and it was blonde, this new woman, for it was essentially a woman, had less hair and it was dark.

“This is bad, Virgil,” Virgil thought, which I could hear because the voice is a close third-person. I had the inside scoop, as well as calling the shots. “This is very bad,” Virgil thought, “but is she bad?” was a question. It was a question for me as well as for Virgil. In this way we were connected, if not similar. I was...it was at a time in my life when I was trying to choose between two women. I was torn between two of them, one a girl-woman, the other a woman-girl. Two women, both bad, had left me simultaneously, and I was all embroiled in trying to decide which one might be best to pursue first.

I met up with Virgil in a local café. He said he was glad I wasn’t him, or vice versa, he didn’t think I was very good at organising my affairs. I told Virgil I could kill him, I was the author.

Virgil is very small now, as the authorial distance is substantial. He’s about the size of an eggcup, from here, albeit differently shaped.


Him

Like most people, I remember exactly where I was when I heard that God was dead. I was standing outside my uncle’s sixtieth birthday party noticing how black the sky was. The phone rang inside a few times and seconds later my uncle let out a horrible, baleful moan. The crowd of voices fell silent. My uncle said something I couldn’t make out then and everyone broke into cries and wailings, some into stupors.

I met my mother just inside the door. She looked pale, her hands held open in supplication. “Dermot,” she gasped. I steadied her shoulders.

“What’s happened?”

“It’s God, Dermot. It’s God–He’s dead!”

She screamed. She’d been very close to Him.

I found my father staring at himself in the living room mirror and gave him my
mother to hold. The party had collapsed into melancholy. People staggered about the food stuffs mumbling, “I can’t believe it,” “You’re never ready for it.” My uncle slouched forward in an uncomfortable, wooden armchair staring at the roses in the carpet. He wasn’t that close to God, but everyone took it hard, and he must have been feeling put upon too with his party ruined. As I passed, he looked up and said, gently, “He had a good stint anyway.”

I found my wife, Clara, sobbing behind a heavy curtain in an upstairs bedroom. She’d been very close to Him too. I got our coats downstairs and we escaped the confusion of the crowd.

At home, I put Clara straight to bed. She curled up under the blankets, in shock and already exhausted. On the news, the next day was declared an international day of mourning. Worldwide weeping went into effect immediately. Cameras brought scenes from every major capital and slum. Religious leaders called it the greatest calamity. There weren’t enough pubs to house the clergy, enough spirits to drown their sorrows. World leaders offered condolences, the queen of England awarding Him a posthumous knighthood and hand-painted corgi figurine. Presidents recently allied over divisive global issues wept together and stood firm in dark wool overcoats. Words were
spoken of retribution, responsibility.

Everyone was talking about it. And of course there were the nay-sayers, those who didn’t believe. My brother, Eddie, was one of them, embarrassing the whole family, shouting out on street corners, on an upended plastic bucket with the front page in his fist. “Lies!” He was only laying low on the Isle of Man, according to Eddie. Then there were the conspiracy theorists, my boss, for instance. And this went on for days. He’d sit me down in his less comfortable office chair to tell me over and over all about how Putin did it, why Putin did it, how he, my boss, had seen it coming.

Clara was devastated. She wouldn’t get out of bed for a week. The most she’d eat was a small drop of chicken broth with a cracker. And it was only natural she’d be hit worse than me, she had at one time considered giving herself to Him. We’d been going out with each other for around two months when she confided in me. She’d been meaning to tell me something. “I’m torn between you and God, Dermot.”

I understood how close she’d been to Him. I understood her grief. And even though He’d threatened my relationship with Clara, I too admired Him. I too missed Him. I had a long time ago gotten into the habit of blaming Him for everything and it had quickly become a source of comfort. It started with blaming Him for confusing Clara. Then, for everything. I blamed Him for death, of course, for the rude threat of heart attacks, for avalanches, for missing socks, for rain, for boys shoving fireworks up frogs’ arses and throwing them up to explode in the air above the quarry. Now that He was gone, there was no one to blame so generally, and I blamed Him one last time for that.