Two Stories

Paul Deppler

Though only in his early twenties, Paul Deppler is already an accomplished craftsman. These two stories caught our eye for their epigrammatic style and creepy undercurrent of menace--real "tales" in the Edgar Allen Poe tradition. Deppler is the first of three previously unpublished writers whose work will appear in Boston Review this year, following the magazine's commitment to support new talent. Stay tuned for stories by Wade Echer and Marianne Taylor, both runners-up in the Review's Fifth Annual Short Story Contest.

--Jodi Daynard, Fiction Editor

Beware the Fall

By the first impressions it offers--the subtle shifts in the background tint, its chilly air like that of a genius in bland company--one wouldn't think to fear the Fall; and by Fall I mean, of course, not anything so wonderful as the chimeric "fall of man," that constant sermon of the itinerant antichrists and piety hucksters--no, there are more ominous leaves than those we find in Paul, and they come in many brilliant colors. No, I mean the season Fall, which is the most dangerous thing I know of by that name.

"That can't be right," you say, "The fall is a thing of wind and color--not danger." To which I respond, is there anything more dangerous than wind and color? Consider this, friend: do you know of anything dangerous which does not have color, and, in a sense, have wind as well? Are not tornadoes windy, and explosions colorful? When you really think about it, don't wind and color seem roughly nature's equivalent to missile and mustard gas? Now admittedly every weapon, when in the hands of a kind-minded person proficient in its use, is of itself no threat; and so too are wind and color of themselves benign. But if these weapons fall into the wrong hands, into the hands of leaves for instance, who are deranged to a man, they become not just dangers but the agents of our common woe. But I thought as you do once; I can relate. I would step out into the air of that season, The Fall, without the several coats of cake-mix, which, I have learned, is the only proven defense against the smells of Fall; and yes there was a time when I, Greg Greg (my name, but I'll thank you not to call me by it) would walk into that perilous clime, which is basically like strolling into a meteor shower, without even wearing a hat! Though, of course, a hat is small defense against the penetrative power of the leaf, whose points, or "teeth" as I call them, are capable of buzz-sawing through the average baby carrier--which I mention to inform, and not to frighten you. What one really needs for capital defense is one of my "Pyramid of Hats" which, though cumbersome, are handsome and have the additional advantage of warping the spine into its proper shape, the spiral.

But I know what you're thinking. You should enjoy the Fall! It's fun time, right? You can run around and do what you want outside in the Fall, right?--right? Nothing could be more wrong. But still I can remember the charms, when I, ignorant of the unseen malice which governs this season, would gaze out on the leaves and feel more pleasure than terror, bemused and enraptured by the way they lingered as they fell--twisting as through a carved random of the air at a speed which seemed exactly medium, like a mean between the rain of the preceding spring and the snow flurries to come. I could not then have guessed that at such speeds a single leaf generates enough momentum to a flatten a strong squirrel and cause very serious scratches to the face. The colors also caught my fancy, the trees like so many Kandinskies in my yard. If I had just bethought that these leaves, though beautiful, were also dead, and that beauty and death together are a lethal mix (as any poet or other necromancer will affirm) perhaps I would have avoided that day of doom, after which Greg Greg would landscape no more. Yes, I was that Greg Greg, the renowned landscapist, the master of shrub, herb and all things green--author of the most vital and breath-taking lawns, gardens, and bowling greens. What follows is the story of my own personal fall.

I was sitting by the window, me and my pipe, enjoying those allurements afore described, when I thought I might improve upon my pleasure with a closer inspection out of doors. No sooner had I forsaken the protective adobe of my home and sat upon a patio chair when a terrific gust of wind bestirred the neighboring leaf-laden trees. A dog barked, a crow cawed, a trumpet blew, and suddenly the armies of the dead flew out from every quarter of their arboreal dominions with just one intention: to ambush me. They, who just moments before had hung in heaven like little seraphim, now threw off their mantle and rained down like hell-fire, stampeding towards me like ungelded bulls and broncos, brandishing their weapons (colors) as they came, with arms whose flesh not yet rotted off the bone; they cried "whish-whish! whish-whish!" The sight of so many, so malicious, made me at first a little woozy, but, taking hold of my courage, I looked about for some weapon of my own. I saw a rake, and, having heard that this long claw was effectual against the rustling fiends, I took it in both hands like a pike and poised myself for battle. The horde seemed outraged by this act of defiance; their charge increased in speed and fervor, and again they cried "Whish-whish!" I was filled with mortal fear. It seemed the struggle of my life in which my insignificant gestures, perhaps vainly, matched their strength against the useless, dry, iridescent dead, purported to transform my verdant lawn into a graveyard. I quaked, and at that moment I felt certain I would rather be caught in a shower of bombs than in a shower of leaves--but still I held my post: as Horatio was to Rome, I was before my lawn. I made wide swaths through the air with my rake, and, as each leaf came within the radius of my weapon, I caught it with the green plastic claw, brought it down to Earth, and crushed its head with the wooden hilt or handle. They kept up this assault for several weeks, and just when it seemed my defeat was sure, I emerged from the battle victorious. All of their reserves were spent; the leaves had fallen. I raked up all the corpses into mounds, pronounced a few words in reverence for the bravely fallen, then put them in trash bags and set them on the curb where the trash man would hopefully take them away soon. It wasn't actually that dangerous, but it was laborious, and pretty boring besides.

Proud of my accomplishment, I laid my rake down beside me and folded my arms across my chest. But I would not have been so smug had I known what sort of legendary leaves exist in this prosaic world, monsters from the heights who death has made more sacrosanct than decomposed, who time does not impugn but supports and even nourishes so that, since death, their every day has made them brighter--so bright indeed, that their colors, centuries old, have rarefied to become a palpable weight, a blunt weapon like a club with which those leaves, dead and evil as they are, fall down upon some young man's hands to crush them.

From the corner of my eye, I spied a leaf, brave and majestic, solitary on an empty tree. He had been watching me, but now, seeing that I saw him, he reared back his noble head, kicked his stem from the tree and rushed me. I turned my head and recognized my enemy instantly. By his prismatic robe and his haughty eye, in which there blazed the fires of the great inferno itself, I knew this was none other than the great Albar el Jahar himself, the King, whose name roughly translated means "a leaf." I would have reached for my rake, but I knew a rake was no defense against el Jahar; I would have fled, but I was rooted to the spot in fright. All I could do was grip the arms of my patio chair and brace myself against the inevitable impact. He seemed to taunt me, turning and twisting in the wind; he kept turning and twisting, coming closer and closer, until at last it landed upon my clenched hands--it was a very large leaf, about three feet in diameter with this tremendous belly hanging over its belt and sweat pants--and crushed them.

That was the end of Greg Greg the landscapist. Now I am Greg Greg whose first name rhymes with his last; Greg Greg whose hands double as zip-lock sandwich bags; Greg Greg the "lunatic," and Greg Greg the "madman"; but Greg Greg the landscapist no more. But perhaps my good name will not have been lost in vain if you heed my warning. Beware the Fall! Whish-whish!

The Barbers

Every day it is the same. It seems like it will be a horror, and he becomes frightened, and I do because he does, and I soothe him, and I am soothed to see he takes courage, then he goes, and I have the house all to myself, and it is solitude but bliss, and when he comes back I must try to make him happy with dinner and lovemaking; then we sleep, and there's the day again, the same.

Every morning it is the same, I say, because I must make sure to wake up before Emanuel, or else. The alarm clock which is near my ear takes me from some dream, which is always happy as it must be for my husband's sake, and I ease him from his sleep. I lean over to my Emanuel and slowly rub his head, which is shaved the way I like it, and I say "No, Emanuel," (for he is my husband and he needs me now) "barbers are not the cruel people you think they are." For I know my husband and the dream he has, for he has always had it; and I know it is the same, for always he says the same to me when I wake him. "Yes, yes, Julia," he says sleepily," you're right. They are cruel." So I poke him and say, "No, Emanuel, they are kind and do not hurt people." But he is a man. He doesn't listen to his wife but to his dreams; he is contrary with me, for such are husbands, and men are proud, which is why women love their husbands. He says, "Yes, exactly. They like to hurt people, hurt them when they feel safe in their hands." So, I rub his head a little faster and say "those are just the barbers in your dreams. Real barbers are nice. They make people's heads look cared for."

"Their heads?" he says. He is waking, recognizing me, "No, Julia. They make heads look like sausage, like red beef and like chum. It is their mission to make a face like a slaughter house." "No, Emanuel!" I say "The things you say! The imagination you have! It just takes an idea and goes! These are your awful dreams talking! Don't pay any attention. You must not fear the barbers! They're just bad dreams that try to control you." To this point I have been talking to him like a child because he has been sleepy and speaking from imagination; but now I see he is awake, for he looks at me quizzically, and says "What was my dream?" (he always forgets that he has a dream) and then he says, "Are you a barber?" And this makes me laugh cheerily, and he looks more quizzically at me. He is now totally confused. "I'm not a barber at all!" I say smiling because he doesn't seem to know who he is, and I take my hand from off his head. Reassuringly I say, "I am your wife, Emanuel! . . . And even if I were a barber, which I'm not, why should anyone fear me when barbers do so much good?" After he hears the word "good" he begins to look as if he is trying to reason towards reality, so I become philosophical in my approach to soothe him. "Why," I say "would anyone not like the barber, or fear him, when he provides a service for people? People must look good to each other, you know, not only for themselves but as a courtesy to others. Barbers help them do this. Barbers make people look good, not horrid and ghastly. That's why they're good and safe people. And that's why everyone likes the barber." "People like the barber?" he questions. "Not ghastly? . . . horrid . . . Do you really think so?" he says. I say, yes, though there are some stereotypes of barbers that people laugh at.

But my husband is becoming shrewd and his own man, awake and alive, and the sheet falls off his chest as he sits up. He leans over to me, and makes his eyes sharp and looks in mine, so I feel challenged and inferior, and he says, "You know, there is this effeminacy mixed with cruelty peculiar to their breed . . . this frightens me. Most people don't like this about barbers, and so the barbers don't like most people, and so barbers keep very, very sharp shears. But people don't like this either. . . . Sometimes I think that maybe I should do something about all the barbers. All of them. There is this one in particular . . . the idea just occurs to me from time to time." He says that every morning, and he makes me feel stupid since he is so sure of himself, so eloquent. Then he seems to forget about barbers for a moment, and he tries to will himself out of bed to work, but I love him, and it hurts to see him go, so I grab his shoulder near the neck, and he falls down to bed again, he is so full of sleep still. Again he starts thinking of barbers, he cannot help it, his thoughts have been warped by the dream. I hold him in my arms and say, "You don't trust barbers do you?" I am smiling because I see he isn't and know he won't be. "I don't trust barbers. No. The thing is that they're not trying to clean people up, they're trying to make them look--" I interrupt him, "What an imagination! That's not what they do!" I say. He says, "Yes, you're right: that's what they do." He doesn't listen to me at all! He thinks that he agrees with me! Men are so funny, so stubborn. He continues, "Sometimes I think that barbers mistake heads and onions, you know? Onions to peel. And that's why barbers are always crying and feel so sad and guilty." "Onions? O Emanuel! What an imagination!" I tell him. "Yes," he says "I agree with you. They are like that." "You can't blame them for your imagination, Emanuel," I say. And he says, "And you know, sometimes I don't blame them, because it is hard to tell where the hair ends and the head begins. Don't you think?" I am laughing, because now is the decisive moment. "Well," I say, "it depends how sharp your shears are!" "They think faces are beards." I tell him no, but I joke with him too, for now I don't want to stop laughing, and I say, "Can you really blame them?" and I laugh. "It's horrible to say," he says, looking up like to stars with big eyes "but I can even empathize with barbers. I mean they see a head, and it looks like a soccer ball, so maybe they mistake it and kick it, or like a baseball . . . I mean, It's so easy." "You don't think that heads are just balls, do you?" I say as if he were a child. "You know? Sometimes I have just that idea." "Well," I say, "they're a little more than just balls--" and he interrupts, "Yes, just balls." "But balls don't have hair!" I say "They don't have beards to be shaved." And then I let him go. I fold my arm across my breast. "That's the other thing," he says, "I can't understand why any man would want to go to the barbers for a shave, to have either their head or beard shaved, either one. Imagine: there the barber stands above the patient, looming above him, and he has total control, and he has the blades, and the man on the chair is wrapped tightly in a cloth and cannot see above him who he trusts in, and the barber holds the razor just below his neck, where a man is most vulnerable, and if there is just a moment of evil, just one in the barber, his patient is dead--for a haircut! I just cannot trust in a tempted man."

With this, he gets up and he looks very strange and wild but sleepy, and I no longer believe I can keep him in bed. I stay in bed and listen to the sounds of drowsiness he makes in the bathroom, his movement to the kitchen. I see him, and he seems insane to the greatest point, his dreams alive and terrible, and I begin to fear for both of us--but he becomes altogether happy after he has had just a little coffee, his dreams and the barbers are all forgotten. That's what he needs. He wakes up then, and he leaves for work with a light step, whistling; and from then on, I think, he has nothing but happy thoughts, though I cannot really tell, for you cannot know inside a man's thoughts. But I know he is a good man whose only trouble is the night. His dreams are all that's bad about him; the rest is responsible and human. I am proud of him, of his work, proud he keeps the cleanest shop, proud he has the sharpest shears and axes. Not worried. It is just these dreams of his that I must ease him from. It is just that I must be here in the morning and at night--for us, to keep us safe. You see, it always seems the horror comes, but it always only seems--it never does, it never does; it is blissful, it repeats.