The Matador in the Bulrush part five

“You didn’t ask him for his?”

Joshua was trying to restrain his laughter as he said “Why?....you think I should have?” and then he was laughing at himself, dragging me with him into a fit of giggles that had no real groundwork of reason.

In Philadelphia, at the height of everyone’s expectations, he left. When the curtains closed on the plays final night, without an explanation or the pomp of parting fellowships he was gone. From there he had taken a two month train ride, saying how much he loved them, as his discoveries took him along each backyard rail -line throughout the southern states. Afterwards, he had travelled city to city, always in search of amateur theatre, those side door troubled venues that were always in need of music and direction. And now here he was in Boston, for how long, he couldn’t say.

Joshua reached for his cup and used it to flag the waitresses’ attention away from the uninterested bartender. After his cup was re-filled he looked at me cradling his chin in his hands, “There it is I guess. And what of you?  Im sure there is a tale to tell”

I didn’t know how to start, what to say, feeling as if the telling would be the thief of the time left to us and rob me of all the things I wished to ask him.

“It was me, who knocked on your door. It was me…that Halloween.”

Joshua frowned, looking for me to continue, “Halloween?.....ahhh…yes….Halloween.” He smiled then, as he reached for his chocolate milk and took a small sip.

“So…you remember?”

“Yes…the wolf boy. Scary mask…big eyes, fast sprint. You were smaller then.”

I laughed, “Much smaller…as were you. As we all were. It was a big world then, filled with big fears and even bigger tragedies. It was me who lost the dare, and had to knock on the door of the ancient ones. Christ…I can still remember how cold it was. We were all sure you had been put under their spell, or were training to become a sorcerer or worse, a dark magic warlock that would rule all the witches of the north.”

There was a new sparkle in his eyes as he grinned, taking a large gulp of milk and after swishing it childishly from cheek to cheek, swallowed it loudly. He looked away from me, the light still visibly flickering in his eyes. “Ancient ones….warlocks…. witches….these are words I haven’t heard in a very long time.”

“Were they?”, I asked quietly.

His face remained turned from me as his grin left. In its place was the slow blinking expression of a tired man thinking, and remembering. “You’re asking if they were witches…conjurers and the like.”

“Yes.”

“Then I am bound to tell you, they were. But not in the way you mean or hope. Did they cast a spell on me? Absolutely. Was I witness to their magic? Yes…I surely was. Was I a prisoner…a hostage…yes…and more willingly as each day passed.” He turned his head back towards me, looking at me with resigned kindness he sighed, “How much time do you have?”

“As long as it takes Joshua, I’ve wondered all my life.”

He smiled and began. “My name was Joshua John Smithson. It is now John Joshua Kalinkovy…or J.J. Kalinkovy if you find an old handbill…and I am the adopted son of Gretcha and Luludja Kalinkovy. In either name, I am the last of them all. Both of them were Romanian First World War brides, and then widows, after marrying two brothers only to watch them fall in the earliest days of their youth and in the earliest hours of their war. In 1914 Gretcha was sixteen. Luludja was a year older. They never married again, and they never had children. After the war, around 1924 they left Europe and made their way to the United States, both of them sticking together, through the days and long hours of working the corn fields, the canning factories, right through the depression and into 1939.  And then war came to them a second time and afterwards, in 1950 they swore they would never look upon another soldier nor hear the accompanying words of hate again. That is what brought them to our town,,, our sleepy naïve ignorant gossipy little community that they so came to love.” He stopped and sipped from his glass. “Its funny to me now…how things go.”

“Continue Joshua…please.”

He was frowning, “When my brother died it destroyed my father. It wasn’t enough that my mother had died, killed at a railway crossing when I was two. My father had a half sister somewhere, but to us it was always a legend or something my father would say, once and awhile, to try and explain away that he wasn’t really the only one left in his family. It must have been very hard on him, after losing my mother, to raise two boys alone. From what I remember, he didn’t do so badly. My brother was a good man, and my father didn’t deserve what happened to him. But…I think things happen for a reason…they must…otherwise why happen at all.” He sipped again, from a glass that was now two-thirds empty. “I love chocolate milk. Why bite into some bar when you can just drink it? This..is my guilty pleasure.” He said, waving his glass at me. “Anyway…It was me who found him. What a horrible day that was…to come home for lunch and find him asleep in his chair. And then the panic when he wouldn’t wake up. I think he just gave up…and went to dreams when everything was perfect. After they took him away there was nowhere for me to go, so I stayed with the priest in his back room for about a week. Man…I gotta tell you…there isn’t anything scarier for a young boy than staying on with a priest, listening in the dark as he mumbled and prayed to the God I was questioning. Then a nun came to see me, telling me that I couldn’t stay…and that I would probably have to leave and be placed into a foster home, if they could find one. I was scared beyond belief, you have no idea. If you think you can’t possibly be more scared, at any given moment, this universe will prove your lie in each new second. I thought I was scared, when the priest would sit across from me at dinner and look at me as if I were about to disappear, and then the whole aspect of nuns and foster homes…created another level. But…when that same nun came to me, and told me that two women had come forward and had insisted on taking me,…well….it was a week later when all the papers were signed and I was in a car, sitting in its back seat with the priest driving me to meet them. That first night was the worst. The house stank of rancid meat, oil and wood smoke. The bed I had was a single cot, with a woolen blanket that itched like crazy. The furnace, when it started, would wind up and howl like scrooges’ ghosts. My bed was in a pantry, and that first night I didn’t sleep, as I looked and convinced myself that all the jars stacked on the shelves as high as the ceiling, held the secret potions of every spell ever cast.” He sipped again, leaving one last swallow for his end. “They both left me alone for awhile. I would come and go…to school and back, with the frustration at having nowhere else to go building in me like a bomb. Christ….did I mention that they never had children? Anyway..every day was the same…oatmeal in the morning…some bag lunch of mystery loaf meats with jarred water…and then dinner…each of which was an ethnic concoction of pre -war un-spiced bland soups, or worse…a jellied bowl of leftovers from dinners I had never seen. Sooooo…one day..I don’t know how long after..I came home…to them and a kitchen that reeked to me of boiled cabbage and curry. I ate…alone at the table…before I finally got up and walked into the living room where they both were sitting. I can still see Gretcha…counting seeds from her paper bags…and Lulu…waiting for me to talk. I lost it…bad. I remember…Jesus…..I remember. I turned on them…yelling…’What the hell is wrong with you both?!!....porridge…porridge…and then garbage for dinner! Wow…there ain’t no one I ever heard could live on this shit! Christ…how did you both even last this long??? Ya got me sealed in some back room….candles and shit….and then if that isn’t enough I have to eat cow slop all day. Is THIS how you expect me to live?  I HATE IT Here….and I wanna go…I don’t care where. Call Father Petrie…get him over here to see what you two have planned…go ahead..I dare you!!!  You both deserve to be in jail!!!” I couldn’t stop myself…  “This house stinks…like dead people…I know your witches!!!...everyone knows your never gonna die and probably have the town under your spell…but you don’t fool me!!!... You both got a devil for a husband, probably that’s it eh??/…ya…go ahead and smile LuLu….cause you know im right. Your BOTH devil worshippers!”

I remember Lulu grinning and then saying, “Finally.”

I stopped and asked “what do you mean..Finally?”

Lulu raised her hand and dismissed me as she elbowed Gretcha, talking in all her beautiful broken english “See thot Gretch? He called me LuLu. Its time now Gretcha…time.”