Woman Wood
THE WOMAN IN THE WOOD by max keanu © 2012Out the door he flew, chainsaw in one hand, parka in the other, his hat cock-eyed to the side, long hair flying as he ran towards the valley where she lie. Crumbs and bits of an egg breakfast adorned his long brown beard. His old yellow tee shirt displayed old, but also freshly brewed coffee stains down the front. He didn't give a damn about appearance. No one would see him today, tomorrow or.... Smokey bolted from beneath the crawlspace of the old cabi
Content
THE WOMAN IN THE WOOD by max keanu © 2012
Out the door he flew, chainsaw in one hand, parka in the other, his hat cock-eyed to the side, long hair flying as he ran towards the valley where she lie. Crumbs and bits of an egg breakfast adorned his long brown beard. His old yellow tee shirt displayed old, but also freshly brewed coffee stains down the front. He didn't give a damn about appearance. No one would see him today, tomorrow or.... Smokey bolted from beneath the crawlspace of the old cabin, dashed past him, nose leading, seeking her also, scents of yesterday still on his dogged-mind and searching soul. Renewed excitement flowed through their veins. Today would be the day, wood be, would be, wood be! The master laughed out loud and quickened his pace. Wood be! Hahaha, the perfect piece of wood is mine. It simply touched my heart when I saw it. She will touch my heart again. Soon, very soon. Smokey coursed the jungle in zigzag patterns, nose to ground, sniffing the air above, then back to ground, big ears scooping, funneling scents to that hunter place, searching highs and lows for other dog's early morning pee-mails. Indirectly, the dog headed towards the sunrise, towards the place from where the morning wind blew, to where their pond lived in memories, towards the place where his master's work could begin anew. They'd explored the jungle forest so many times, together, but separate, one master following the other. They knew the imposing forest from every angle possible; every manifestation of their forest's light and shadow imprinted forever in them. They'd tramped the jungle forest at every time of day and once for an entire night. During a harvest moon---a harvest moon of a long-gone October always remembered. A lover's moon, with her, so alive back then. So alive! The woman in the wood, the wood was his woman, the prefect wood, a fallen tree, a tree crumbling in years of decay, like him---a soul of moss and jungle rot, of rotten inner and outer corruption, a living corpse, buried but salvageable. As she was back then.... Would be, wood be, it will be.... The woman, the wood, in loving mango wood, he would make it his forever--- he knew he would, knowing the wood. She's perfect wood. Mango wood. She would be his. Her beauty is in the wood. Remember her! Smokey appeared atop a small rise, stationed confident, muscle solid, surveying their domain, their four acres, proud standing in ownership and knowing. Knowing, waiting, panting hard, catching dogbreaths in rhythmic pants, smiling wide, canines flashing, with eyes always on his master's every move. His confidant shoulders swayed down, neck stretched out full, hound chest breathing in-out, in-out, feeding nature into his senses, into his heart, his soul soul. Catching the streaming and raying warmth of the
morning sun on grey-blue fur, he seemed to radiate enchantment against the jungle's overwhelming verdure. A sunrise of pastels clouds cast them in pinkened-whitened auras; dappled light within a dark jungle, alive in the trade winds, shadows rippling over them as they moved over the tree-twisted roots crisscrossing the jungle floor. They followed streams of sunlight, rays seeming to pull the directions right out of them, guiding them to where she lie, waiting to free her, singing to him of the wood, in the wood.... Wood would be the form. The function would be beauty. The result would be happiness. At the top of the next rise, they gazed down and beheld the green and verdant valley of lantana, Koa trees and Guavas with millions of fruit suspended, bursts of yellow against green walls of leaves and branches. The mist of grey-blue jungle fog, at the bottom of the valley, crept towards them— encircling, ensnaring. Mist over the location where she lies encased in nature, lounging recumbent, decomposing, waiting for me, for my saw, my chisel, my mallet, for freedom, for— Smokey flew off, caught in the scents of yesterdays and today. His rambunctiousness of run, run hard, sniff, sniff-run, run fast, sniff bird, sniff pig, and sniff out the decaying deadness, all a Weimaraner's heaven. What heaven was and always would be. The wood knows the truth. Smokey pulls me closer to her, over and over, day after day. He knows the way it will always be, will be, and wood be, would be, what ever will be, will be. The master laughed at the song pun, conjuring up a golden and gilded Doris Day dancing memory, a flighty tap-dancy dance clicking through a matrix of boyhood jukebox memories from Dad’s Bar & Grill. What ever will be, will be. A few more yards, a last bend in the jungle trail and there she existed, as he had left her yesterday at the last fading light of dusk. No full moon, no flashlight, or he would have spent the whole night by her side. Yesterday, he envisioned the slope of her shoulder, her pointing finger at the end of a slender wood-carved arm, a limb reaching out to him, beckoning him. Love at first sight. She reaches out from long agos, from pasts now pointless. Her long finger summoned love, so long ago, pointing at me with one beautiful finger, beckoning me, touching my heart, my soul. That summoning wood now seen— held deep in an ancient mango trunk. Deep cuts required to give her the depth of a soul he'd dreamed of, a soul in wood reformed, a reformation into her physical form. Wood to be, or wood not to be? Oh, she will be! She exists in the wood. I see her! He stared hard at the forty-foot mango tree, at the trunk section containing her, sheathing her. In his perfectionist artist's mind he measured two million times and imagined one million cuts. Contemplative weighing, geometric thinking, passionate imaginings, al forcing the unrequited artist-lover mind in him to awaken, to take full measures of full treasures, remembering...
The love of a man and a woman! Dealing with pain, her pain--- Put your god-forsaken agony into the wood! Make the deep cuts, the very deep cuts, remember the bloody cuts, ripping hearts apart heart by heart, ripping blades of gouging anger, chiseling jealousy, hammering in the hate with eyes of rage in love gone so wrong. Gone so Goddamned wrong! The destroying of what would have been, in wood to be, would be, my wood to be.... Smoky rustled cattails behind, the tendrils of nature's growing and swaying in the thick viscous and black muck. Water splashing paws, a last investigation, a last surveying of the perimeter to check for anything living or dead. Satisfied, he moved to master's side, realizing the master had returned to his world, to art, to his obsession, to his world of wood. The master peered into his dog's eyes, smiled at him, petted him, looked at the wood and thought, Your final day buried in the woodlands sweetheart, your last day left alone to be ravaged by the sun, the wind, the humidity of decay, the pelting tropical rains, the elements of death and decay. Decades alone in a forest dark, hectored by hungry insects, insulted by birds, by munching mongoose in a lone forgotten forest of burial. Dust-to-dust manifestations echoed as exhilaration assaulted him. His was an all-knowing awareness in this wood. This was Anastasia in the raw, in a recumbent primal state right before his eyes. Finally, she's come back to me! The sun's ray speared through the jungle forest to light her up, warm her wood, bring the raw greying wood of the long dead trunk alive for him to understand. All nine feet of her lie bathed in sunlit glory, the magnificence of the morning light and a desire for her return. An artist without light shining in the mind's studio lives a dark existence trapped in mediocrities' torture chamber... mediocrities' torture chamber... never again!
The mango wood was now alive. Anastasia’s unclothed figure visible in deep angular velocities of imaginings, the spirit of her release overwhelming, her soon-to-be body would be freed from the entrapment of wood. He experienced a brilliance of imagined-sketching, mind-whipping charcoal lines on brain canvas, for deep below the rough wood, Anastasia’s magnificence called out, called the artist in him.
Bring me alive, my lover! Bring me back to life! Beings naked. Our bed. You, wanting her, motioning with a long, painted fingernail... summoning. Our marriage bed. The first time a finger, curling slowly summoning, wanting... never forgotten. He laughed out loud for the first time in a long time and smiled to Smokey. Petting the back of his long muscular neck, taking his floppy, felt-soft ears into one hand, he gently twisted the short fur around and around. Smokey, not use to his master smiling, bent his head forty-five-degrees, as if poised in a questioning mode--- Ohhhhh, the rapture has arrived my master, his eyes said, but his furrowed brow also displayed a canine bewariness. The master, like many men, was a man of unpredictability, capriciousness and red-raw rage.
He walked towards the woman in the wood, pulled the chainsaw rope, determined, delighted, confident about the conceptual image of her constantly astounding his renewed desires. His old self, a flash memory of the old self emerged in her woody presence--- a memory of her last day by the pond and he knew it was now... or never. He sang the Elvis Priestly song at the top of his lungs. It's now or never. For the moment was --birth, renaissance, channeled ecstasy, the genesis of her—Kiss me my darling— the boundaries of nature's forces holding her to the forest floor, all, soon to fall away,
Tomorrow will be too late, It's now or never My love won't wait.
On the second pull, an avalanche of sawing roar ravaged the jungle, disturbing the birds, drowning out the rustle of billions of leaves blustering in the trade winds. Smokey cowered, but trusted his master implicitly. He bore the high-pitched, riotous sawing whines and grinds of the chainsaw with caution. Nonetheless, he was happy, in a tale-wagging excitement, as his master was at work. And there was no happier master than a master at work. Smokey wondered, wondered in deep dog-dimensional thinking, if today was a good day or a bad day, wondered if master would smile more often, if the wood would good to him this time. Well would it? Please! The whirring, buzzing, and whinnying saw changed the pitch and yaw of the forest as the biting blades savaged the tree's wood. Smokey backed away, remembering that one dark night by the pond. Remembering, watching the chainsaw with squinting eyes, clinched lips, entranced as the master cut, moved, cut and move over the decaying trunk. It was a dance only the master knew, only he understood; a lone dancer leading a noisy death machine of destruction in movements as lithe and gentle as any malevolent-and love-crazed male ballet dancer who'd encountered the malignant forest troll of the mind.
Like a willow, we would cry an ocean If we lost true love and sweet devotion It's now or never....
Cut and move, cut and move and he flew over the top of the mango tree's carcass --- inspired and mad possessed, screaming and singing, swiveling his hips in an Elvis mode of joyous certainty— it’s now or never—an elation only the mad-inspired artist knows. He perceived her freedom, her escape from the eternity of entrapment.
He felt the massive tree give way, crack underfoot, then slide-hesitantly, like she did in those first weeks of long-ago love, until she gave in to the pleasure of hands roving over soft skin, the swift grabbing frenzy, the frantic wanting, the needing of flesh, of souls entwined in the sum total of a once true love. With a snorting exhale, a deep inhale, he swung the chainsaw down hard for the last cut. She fell, she was free. She was his.
She was!
Cutting the saw's engine, jumping off her onto the soft jungle floor, he placed the hot chainsaw in the moist ferns and ran to a higher point in the valley. He turned to look at her in the raw, saw the blackness, the brownness, the bareness, her bark-shredded shards revealing a virgin wood, a virgin wood in grained tenderness. His artist muscles ached to gouge, chisel, sooth, and caress her ---his sculptor 's mind now alive, imagining her alive, his mind's eye seeing her fully formed into a revealed and renewed beauty. .... Six, eight weeks... Oh my darling, my darling, you'll be alive again! A half-ton of solid mango wood, fallen years ago, forgotten, captive to the dust-to-dust paradigm of a lonely decay. Staring at her in the wood he knew she yearned for loving transport to his studio, to be worked, handled, explored, penetrated and loved with a sculpture's hammering, chiseling, caressing, probing night after night, day after day, and in all the times in between. Oh! Those nights with her! What we did! What I would do for her! In the beautiful raw hunk of the mango tree trunk, he imagined the gentle cuts to be applied on grains, going with the grains, coaxing the grains in moving, curling, twisting sawing thrusts and sandpaper caresses around knots that were once limbs with the over and under curvilinear twists of magnificent colorations, of hues and aspects of a sculpture in perfection. Her ideal form—long perceived, long imagined, long dreamed of in perfect formulations. He had so much work to do to bring this wood back to life. I will it! I will do it! Smokey knew this piece of mango wood would vie for his master's attention. Nevertheless, it could end up near the pond. Like the last ones did, only to become fiery infernos of axed up and hacked up female forms. To watch his master sink into a place of dark dreams, into deteriorating days and the constant whippings of self-hatred was the one future he dreaded.
* The Kubota tractor was painted a bright orange, but rusted, scratched, dented and abused, like almost all of man's metal in the all consuming humidity, corroding, raining, ravaging, decaying, molding, musty, mildewy environmentally destructosystem called the rainforest. Kubo rolled strong and steady. He could depend on the small Kubota to do the grunt work of bringing his woman home to him. The rectangular mango block was only a half-ton. The relocation to his
studio would be a day's work---if it didn't rain, or mist, or drizzle, or pour, or monsoon-drench the life out of everything for an eternity of fortnights. Rainbows, rain forest, rain gear, rain boots, sucking mud, slipping, sliding, slopping. Goddamn I hate it when it rains! She hated the rain and the muddy waterfalls, the brown mud filled pond, the smell of constant rain, torrents of rain, never-ending down pours... like her last pleading tears, tears flowing endlessly from eyes so beguiling, over high cheek bones sharpen by the grindings of her infidelity.
The nine-foot long, five-foot wide extraction of solid mango wood burrowed through the soft humus soil on the winding forest road back towards home, back towards her place of honor in the studio. The trough it ploughed would wash away within a week, as they all had.
Towards sunset, the freed-up stump was situated on the revolving turnstile that would be her plinth. She would live and grow here until her last curve was fine sanded, oil-rubbed smooth, loved and caressed a million times. I won’t sleep until the moment the wood sings to me in a single voice, until she comes alive, until the last polishing of a soft clothe on wood. What if I do bring her alive? Will we sing as we once did? Singing in a single forest voice, like that last time together. Smokey witnessed the master shed a tear after a few minutes of gazing wide-eyed at the tree trunk. After ten more minutes of feely-touchy hands to wood, he began to cry in fantastic sobs, weeping in his madness, crying out the pain as only his artist-master would. The wood knows.... Smokey understood another period of hell might be his future. He'd keep an eye on the wood and the other eye on his tortured master. That wood... that wood would be a blessing or a curse.
* It was six weeks to the day and she was sculpted, finished, finito, wrapped-up, done, done, done! He knew the last stroke of a sculpture was an exercise in self-control--- he also knew when enough, was enough. He thought her perfect and vowed not to change a thing. He'd been down that road before. No one had seen her during rebirth. Carlton Lamb was not a gregarious man. Hermit was his designation from the community, and the first impression a layman or a lost tourist had of him. Artists in the Maui community called him brilliant, a mad soul, an enlightened sprit, but a soul caught in dark manifestations of a past affair of love’s unfairness. Bringing her to life had not been easy. Night after night under hot lighting needing to be adjusted and reconfigured in regard to luminosity, angle, and directions and shadows. Then there was the pesky trade wind drafts, dehydrating south wind drafts, queer drafts out of the east, and the never-ending moisture from the north. A wood-dusted grimy cake of wood shaving covered everything. The studio wreaked of rancid coffee smell, the decaying smell of old meals swarming with flies, the rotting smell of trashcans forgotten or ignored. His was a life crying out for any woman's touch. Carlton was a perfectionist in
everything he did when it came to art. However, his house, his dog, his personal hygiene all took a back seat to the woman in the wood. Smokey, a nervous and temperamental Weimaraner became even more anxious and hyper and only found solace in chewing his master's old shoes and howling at all phases of the moon. To placate him during the nights of rendering toil, chiseling trouble and furious sanding sessions towards perfections, Carlton tossed him any old shoe, new or old, anything to keep the dogs demands on him to a minimum. Carlton worked shoeless, pant less and shirtless. However, he wore leather chaps, gloves, a cap and safety glasses at all times, as foresight is always better than no sight. He considered it crass to be totally naked in front of her. To him, she was reborn in his studio, was his baby, his virgin, his magical invention and his soul’s creation. He covered her with a flowered eiderdown quilt his long-dead mother had sent him for those cold nights that never came to Hawaii.
* Skylar Fanourios was twenty years and of a friendship built on mutual need and jungle loneliness, although Carlton really had no friends except his wood and his dog. Skylar, an obnoxious fellow, butted into people lives whether they wanted him to or not. He was a driven soul, a musician, long established and talented, with an always-gigging income, a man always pushing people to develop their talents. "So man, what's the project keeping you from hanging out at Casanova's? Ain't seen you for months," Skylar told him, twisting and pulling on his long, bead-braided goatee and curled moustache. "Sky, what happened to your head? Man, you really look better bald, head shaved," Carlton said, in the distanced way he had with others. Skylar knew right way he was avoiding the question. "You ain't gonna throw me off the scent. You been hard at work on somethin' and Dude, your doggie looks like a mangy bastard. You haven't taken care of him, you look like shit and your hands look like you've been working in a friggin' granite quarry. Don't fuck with me, Carlton. What you been creating? And why ain't you got any coffee in this place for Christ sake?" Skylar had a way of cutting through the bullshit with people. His disarming smile always popped up and surprised people after his tirades and rants. Everyone knew their secrets were safe with Skylar. "Come into my studio," Carlton said, hesitancy in his voice. Smokey was up in a flash as he heard the inflection in his master's voice. He was talking about her, about the wood, about the one subject master loved more than him and life itself. Skylar also heard the proud inflections. Carlton Lamb had genius in him and as he followed him into his studio he recognized the confidence of creation in his friend's step, a lightness of being, a confidence of movement and a now lingering smile on his face. And that was a first! Carlton hadn't smiled for so many years. Since Stacy left him.
"I think it's pretty good," Carlton said, his smile larger, "I call her, Lamb of Life, Redux." Carlton placed his hands on the flowery quilt covering, moving it off. A well-rubbed and polished brown wood sculpted human foot was visible, but even this small teaser lite up Skylar's curiosity and admiration. "I ever tell you about my foot fetish, Carly? Jesus man, that's one sexy foot!" The quilt stopped moving. Carlton looked back at Skylar in anger. It was a look Skylar had seen before. Temperamental fucking artist, he thought, and returned a mirrored mean look and shook his fist at Carlton. "Look man, it really is one great lookin foot. Carly, dude, you need to lighten up! Learn how to take criticism or praise! Ain't like your gonna reveal Michelangelo's Pietà or David and set the fucking world on fire, are you? Ah, man, take the fuckin' tacky blanket off. Get on with it, haven’t I always been a straight shooter and honest with you? Carlton smiled, then pulled the quilt off in one swift movement. He walked to where Smoky sat chewing his boot. He finally, after so many months, sought strength and comfort by giving him a hug. Smokey leaned into his master with the affection and adoration of fifty dogs. Carlton watched Sky out of the corner of his eye. Knowing Skylar as he did, he expected an incisive cut-to-the-bone commentary of today's art world and Carlton's place in it, how he could climb the ladder of artistic success, gain money and fame, chicks galore, and kudos from all the lonely people dying for a fulfilled life through art and to willing to part with big money. And so on and so on, Skylar was a true master of flinging the bullshit... or to admiration and reverence for the truth when revealed to him. Skylar removed off his signature, fly-eyed sunglasses and moved to different locations in the room. He adjusted the overhead light for more intensity, and then turned the lights off, casting the room in its ghost shadows and melancholic moods that now began talking to Carlton. Still alive, even in the dark, in the shadows, in an afterlife... darling, my darling Carlton. Yes, share my love, your love with others. Skylar remained silent, arms akimbo, head turning back and forth on a veined neck, viewing the sculpture head to foot, face to toes. Carlton observed tears in Skylar's eyes, then saw those tears and more rolling down both of his cheeks. Contemplating, wondering, pondering, the parts and parcels of arts messages.... Instead of saying something, which he usually always did, Skylar left the studio and went to the edge of the property to a place of plant tendrils, giant leaves and clingy vines where the deep jungle began. Carlton watched him wipe his eyes with his hands and wondered if he was ill. With Smokey at his side, he walked closer towards him. "Hey Sky, what's up? You all right, man? You sick, or what?" "Oh brother, I tell you dude, you've done it Carlton! Carlton Lamb, your fuckin name will go down in the history of sculpture, of art forever and ever. I've have never in my life seen a work of art so fucking beautiful. I have chills and shivers from looking at her. You did it Carlton! You brought Anastasia Lamb back— I am so fucking proud of you dude!"
Sky never lied, nor did he often give deep emotional and heartfelt praise, but Carlton realize Sky had placed and arm around his shoulders and kept shaking his head in some kind of wonderment, repeating over and over, " You did it, man, you did it. She's so ... ! Your art dream is realized. You did it man! Send Stacy a photo of this!" "No way. Anastasia’s in Bali or Java or somewhere down south. I'll never disturb her again."
* A month later the word had spread. The gallery representatives rolled in, the local news hounds arrived, the Honolulu glossy mags and eZines sent in stringers to get the scoop, snap the shots, pump a meager artist's grateful and grasping hand. They all arrived with their professional art baggage, slinging big words of art and money and who's who of what's what. They lectured and cajoled Carly-baby about how tiny artists types became grand master's of men and vision once the mass media mavens of refined culture took notice, gave them the boost up to fame and fortune. For a percentage, for a cut of the action, for the connections, of course. Carlton refused them all. A personality thing, as every personality outside of Skylar's and Smokey's he considered aliens from another time and place and mindset and dimension. And the word got around in the island art world that Carlton was an anti-social prick. The minions of the press and arty-world were not kind to him. When the furor died down, Carlton was happy. Anastasia was back in his life. And she was all that mattered. But a good man, Clark DeMain, an art critic on vacation, contacted Skylar about the sculpture. They simply sneaked in one day when Carlton was out looking for scraps of wood to carve his livelihood of tiki gods and wooden tiki torches for tourists. The studio was dark, the quilt over the wood. Skylar told DeMain to close his eyes, then he flipped on the light and off came the quilt. "Clark, open up your eyes to experience artistic perfection." At first, DeMain said nothing. He smiled to Skylar, cynical eyebrows signaling a New York spate of mind. Skylar flipped the overhead working lights on; the wood's sheen came alive in depths of color and resonance and magic. DeMain circled the sculpture four times, like a jungle cat evaluating a carcass that might be alive. He knelt down, cheek-to-cheek with the face of Anastasia Lamb, her looking up at him with what he thought were the eyes of God's favorite angel. Her face held his attention, as if he were drugged beyond the ability to respond. He reached out, ran the gentle and soft the tips of his fingers over the lips, and nose, and over the eyes. He shook his head, his eyes grew misty, tears fell and then he sobbed aloud. "Oh, my God, Skylar, this is excellence. I’ve never... I've never seen a sculpture of this caliber in my entire life. Thank you, Skylar. I thank you for making an old and jaded art critic happy. I've witnessed a work of art that is truly immaculate and transcendent."
After DeMain's articles in Art Forum and Art For Art's Sake, the world beat a path to Carlton Lamb's door. The masses no longer came as boisterous mad dogs and greedy and selfish men, but as humble artists and critics with understandings of life and love built into their souls. All proclaimed Carlton Lamb the modern day Michelangelo in unassuming and sincere praise. The offers, the commissions flowed in. With recognition, Carlton found resolution for the pain from Anastasia deserting him. However, he never allow the sculpture out of the studio, never allowed photographs and allowed only 250 limited edition bronzes, at one-quarter size, to be cast.
* During a full moon night in a humid October, Carlton sat in the darkened studio, across from his Anastasia with Smokey at his feet. He watched the variations of moonlight play across her wooden, but so alive face. He let himself slide back into memories of tenderness for her and those final moments of her supplication by her side at the pond... before she turned on him. But then he spotted a flaw! A flaw over her right eye! It was only a millimeter high protrusion on her right eyelid. He jumped up, flipped on all the studio lights. The bright light washed out the imperfection, so he dimmed the rheostat and in near darkness the flaw reappeared. Grabbing a sharp texturing tool and fine wet sandpaper, he sat to work correcting this almost imperceptible flaw. Smokey sat behind him transfixed, for he had assumed the lady in the wood languished in a peaceful sleep forever. Gently moving the tool over the eyelid, he probed into the wood, only a nano-fraction of an inch above the flaw. And then, out of nowhere, Smokey barked. Loud. Demanding. For reasons only he knew. Carlton's tool slipped, taking the interior of the eye out in one sudden movement. He reeled back as he realized the extent of the damage—destroyed— corrupted! Anastasia Lamb starred at him with one beautiful, ever-lasting eye next to a socket of black nothingness. "You fucking dog!" he yelled and swung the gouging tool back at Smokey in anger, the tool going deep into his broad chest in the vicinity of his heart. Smokey crumpled to the floor, then righted himself as the master swung again, this time striking his eye, ending his binocular vision. As the master pulled back a violent hand for another swing, the wounded dog leapt up. In a limping run he was out the door and heading towards the jungle. Crazed mad --- Anastasia destroyed, no longer perfect, no longer divine--- All the memories of her violent murder reemerged in him, took control of a mind anchored to sanity by this one magnificent work of art. Running to the house, he fetched his shotgun and then upon return, fired 20 rounds into the wood that was her soul. Her flawed and taunting spirit now despoiled and defiled forever ignited his angered and deranged soul. He fired up the chainsaw, gripped the handle and hacked into her with a ferocious and trembling vengeance. With the other hand he swung his ax in screaming, down-pounding violent arcs. "Wink at him, will you! Fuck him right under my nose! You fucking whore! You slut whore! You cunt! I killed you once and I'll kill you again!"
He yielded the chainsaw for what seemed like hours, savaging the wood as he witnessed recurrent ghostly manifestations of her all about his studio. Her taunting apparitions mocking him in the window's reflections and skylights, squatting in corners, while naked and shitting and pissing and laughing at him. She appeared on the ceiling in the frenzied shadows play of his fully illuminated violent movements. He imagined her sitting at his desk, laughing shrikes of hatred at him and cracking the glass to their wedding photo into a million shards, then demonically torching their wedding photo. She ridiculed and mocked him with that echoing nasal laugh of hers, which only stoked his insanity to new phantasmagoric heights. The chainsaw puttered to a stop, out of gas, hazy grey-blue wisps of acrid smoke curled around his arm and the hot handle, the chainsaw now his eternal handshake with his devil. All that remained in pristine condition was the arm he'd first envision so many months ago. It had somehow escaped the carnage and still, as he stared at it, the tip of her finger beckoned him to return to the pond, her memory and her loving corpse. His heart sank lower upon seeing Smokey's blood trailing out the studio door. Smokey's place of refuge was the pond, the waterfall, the place where the three of them had spent so much time loving and growing together in devotion... until that night. He picked up the pristine unscathed wooden arm of Anastasia and ran to rescue his dog. Smokey was the last being on earth he wanted to hurt. His tears surged for his dog, nearly blinding him, yet in a redeeming way let him focus his mind, experience goodness within by feeling pity for the living and the loved. "Oh I have done such bad thing! Forgive me, oh Lord, forgive me. Let him be alive!" He ran hard along the trail to the waterfall. However, the hallucinations, the October full moon's eerie light brought Anastasia back to life once again. She appeared to him, standing erect, ephemeral and shimmering on the flat, stillness of their pond in the far distance. She laughed at him in that mean and unmistakable, heart- puncturing and piercing nasal laugh of hers. He covered his ears with his filthy hands, tried to force her out of his mind, but still she laughed. But her laughs turned to screams, identical to the night screams of her murder and blood-spattering dismemberment. Reeling, but still determined, he found the strength to carry on, knowing he had to save his precious dog. To set things right, he is but an innocent... In the bright October full moonlight, he viewed fresh blood on the trail and prayed he wasn’t too late. He tucked the wooden arm next to his body and ran forward at full speed. Fifty yards from the pond he sighted Smokey, heard him moaning in an awful agony. The wounded dog lay prostrate a top the earth where master had buried Anastasia's numerous body parts. He pawed the ground with front paws, whimpering his last imploring exhales, pleading with her to help his master, to sooth his angry soul and to allow the both of them to die peacefully in her arms. "No! Smokey, you will not die on me! " Carlton yelled as he flew down the mud-slick trail. In his haste, he tripped, fell, knowing he would recover, then get up unharmed and save his beloved dog's life. However, upon rising, Anastasia's wooden arm protruded from his chest cavity. He thought it only a strange night vision, a metaphoric hallucination, an inspiration revealed, an artist's intuition showing him a vision for his next sculpture, but this inspiration was accompanied by unbelievable physical pain.
The surreal turned to true reality as he sank back into the thick moist floor of the jungle, knowing she had literally touched his heart again. He looked down to examine her arm projecting out of his chest. The arm had inserted cleanly, permanently and his lifeblood seeped out. The wooden arm reached deep into him, her beckoning finger having punctured his heart. "Thank you my Anastasia, my darling," he exhaled, with a deep sigh and an accepting smile. He laughed loud, and then said to her, as she stood before him once again in her shimmering illusory allure, "The suffering is over for both of us, Anastasia. Grant me one wish, my darling. Tell me we can be together in death forever." “—“ "No? You bitch! NO!" In the near distance, Carlton realized Smokey now lie forever silent, eyes closed, at peace, in an eternity of guarding Anastasia’s earthen grave. Carlton fell back to a prone position, his head settling into the cool jungle mud. Looking up through the jungle’s massive Koa and Mango trees, he beheld the sun’s rays flittering between a billion leaves, tenuous cloud pillows of brilliant white drifting by in the trade winds, eclipsing the infinity of blue sky... slowly fading, darkening, blackening into the final dream no man wants to dream....
Out the door he flew, chainsaw in one hand, parka in the other, his hat cock-eyed to the side, long hair flying as he ran towards the valley where she lie. Crumbs and bits of an egg breakfast adorned his long brown beard. His old yellow tee shirt displayed old, but also freshly brewed coffee stains down the front. He didn't give a damn about appearance. No one would see him today, tomorrow or.... Smokey bolted from beneath the crawlspace of the old cabin, dashed past him, nose leading, seeking her also, scents of yesterday still on his dogged-mind and searching soul. Renewed excitement flowed through their veins. Today would be the day, wood be, would be, wood be! The master laughed out loud and quickened his pace. Wood be! Hahaha, the perfect piece of wood is mine. It simply touched my heart when I saw it. She will touch my heart again. Soon, very soon. Smokey coursed the jungle in zigzag patterns, nose to ground, sniffing the air above, then back to ground, big ears scooping, funneling scents to that hunter place, searching highs and lows for other dog's early morning pee-mails. Indirectly, the dog headed towards the sunrise, towards the place from where the morning wind blew, to where their pond lived in memories, towards the place where his master's work could begin anew. They'd explored the jungle forest so many times, together, but separate, one master following the other. They knew the imposing forest from every angle possible; every manifestation of their forest's light and shadow imprinted forever in them. They'd tramped the jungle forest at every time of day and once for an entire night. During a harvest moon---a harvest moon of a long-gone October always remembered. A lover's moon, with her, so alive back then. So alive! The woman in the wood, the wood was his woman, the prefect wood, a fallen tree, a tree crumbling in years of decay, like him---a soul of moss and jungle rot, of rotten inner and outer corruption, a living corpse, buried but salvageable. As she was back then.... Would be, wood be, it will be.... The woman, the wood, in loving mango wood, he would make it his forever--- he knew he would, knowing the wood. She's perfect wood. Mango wood. She would be his. Her beauty is in the wood. Remember her! Smokey appeared atop a small rise, stationed confident, muscle solid, surveying their domain, their four acres, proud standing in ownership and knowing. Knowing, waiting, panting hard, catching dogbreaths in rhythmic pants, smiling wide, canines flashing, with eyes always on his master's every move. His confidant shoulders swayed down, neck stretched out full, hound chest breathing in-out, in-out, feeding nature into his senses, into his heart, his soul soul. Catching the streaming and raying warmth of the
morning sun on grey-blue fur, he seemed to radiate enchantment against the jungle's overwhelming verdure. A sunrise of pastels clouds cast them in pinkened-whitened auras; dappled light within a dark jungle, alive in the trade winds, shadows rippling over them as they moved over the tree-twisted roots crisscrossing the jungle floor. They followed streams of sunlight, rays seeming to pull the directions right out of them, guiding them to where she lie, waiting to free her, singing to him of the wood, in the wood.... Wood would be the form. The function would be beauty. The result would be happiness. At the top of the next rise, they gazed down and beheld the green and verdant valley of lantana, Koa trees and Guavas with millions of fruit suspended, bursts of yellow against green walls of leaves and branches. The mist of grey-blue jungle fog, at the bottom of the valley, crept towards them— encircling, ensnaring. Mist over the location where she lies encased in nature, lounging recumbent, decomposing, waiting for me, for my saw, my chisel, my mallet, for freedom, for— Smokey flew off, caught in the scents of yesterdays and today. His rambunctiousness of run, run hard, sniff, sniff-run, run fast, sniff bird, sniff pig, and sniff out the decaying deadness, all a Weimaraner's heaven. What heaven was and always would be. The wood knows the truth. Smokey pulls me closer to her, over and over, day after day. He knows the way it will always be, will be, and wood be, would be, what ever will be, will be. The master laughed at the song pun, conjuring up a golden and gilded Doris Day dancing memory, a flighty tap-dancy dance clicking through a matrix of boyhood jukebox memories from Dad’s Bar & Grill. What ever will be, will be. A few more yards, a last bend in the jungle trail and there she existed, as he had left her yesterday at the last fading light of dusk. No full moon, no flashlight, or he would have spent the whole night by her side. Yesterday, he envisioned the slope of her shoulder, her pointing finger at the end of a slender wood-carved arm, a limb reaching out to him, beckoning him. Love at first sight. She reaches out from long agos, from pasts now pointless. Her long finger summoned love, so long ago, pointing at me with one beautiful finger, beckoning me, touching my heart, my soul. That summoning wood now seen— held deep in an ancient mango trunk. Deep cuts required to give her the depth of a soul he'd dreamed of, a soul in wood reformed, a reformation into her physical form. Wood to be, or wood not to be? Oh, she will be! She exists in the wood. I see her! He stared hard at the forty-foot mango tree, at the trunk section containing her, sheathing her. In his perfectionist artist's mind he measured two million times and imagined one million cuts. Contemplative weighing, geometric thinking, passionate imaginings, al forcing the unrequited artist-lover mind in him to awaken, to take full measures of full treasures, remembering...
The love of a man and a woman! Dealing with pain, her pain--- Put your god-forsaken agony into the wood! Make the deep cuts, the very deep cuts, remember the bloody cuts, ripping hearts apart heart by heart, ripping blades of gouging anger, chiseling jealousy, hammering in the hate with eyes of rage in love gone so wrong. Gone so Goddamned wrong! The destroying of what would have been, in wood to be, would be, my wood to be.... Smoky rustled cattails behind, the tendrils of nature's growing and swaying in the thick viscous and black muck. Water splashing paws, a last investigation, a last surveying of the perimeter to check for anything living or dead. Satisfied, he moved to master's side, realizing the master had returned to his world, to art, to his obsession, to his world of wood. The master peered into his dog's eyes, smiled at him, petted him, looked at the wood and thought, Your final day buried in the woodlands sweetheart, your last day left alone to be ravaged by the sun, the wind, the humidity of decay, the pelting tropical rains, the elements of death and decay. Decades alone in a forest dark, hectored by hungry insects, insulted by birds, by munching mongoose in a lone forgotten forest of burial. Dust-to-dust manifestations echoed as exhilaration assaulted him. His was an all-knowing awareness in this wood. This was Anastasia in the raw, in a recumbent primal state right before his eyes. Finally, she's come back to me! The sun's ray speared through the jungle forest to light her up, warm her wood, bring the raw greying wood of the long dead trunk alive for him to understand. All nine feet of her lie bathed in sunlit glory, the magnificence of the morning light and a desire for her return. An artist without light shining in the mind's studio lives a dark existence trapped in mediocrities' torture chamber... mediocrities' torture chamber... never again!
The mango wood was now alive. Anastasia’s unclothed figure visible in deep angular velocities of imaginings, the spirit of her release overwhelming, her soon-to-be body would be freed from the entrapment of wood. He experienced a brilliance of imagined-sketching, mind-whipping charcoal lines on brain canvas, for deep below the rough wood, Anastasia’s magnificence called out, called the artist in him.
Bring me alive, my lover! Bring me back to life! Beings naked. Our bed. You, wanting her, motioning with a long, painted fingernail... summoning. Our marriage bed. The first time a finger, curling slowly summoning, wanting... never forgotten. He laughed out loud for the first time in a long time and smiled to Smokey. Petting the back of his long muscular neck, taking his floppy, felt-soft ears into one hand, he gently twisted the short fur around and around. Smokey, not use to his master smiling, bent his head forty-five-degrees, as if poised in a questioning mode--- Ohhhhh, the rapture has arrived my master, his eyes said, but his furrowed brow also displayed a canine bewariness. The master, like many men, was a man of unpredictability, capriciousness and red-raw rage.
He walked towards the woman in the wood, pulled the chainsaw rope, determined, delighted, confident about the conceptual image of her constantly astounding his renewed desires. His old self, a flash memory of the old self emerged in her woody presence--- a memory of her last day by the pond and he knew it was now... or never. He sang the Elvis Priestly song at the top of his lungs. It's now or never. For the moment was --birth, renaissance, channeled ecstasy, the genesis of her—Kiss me my darling— the boundaries of nature's forces holding her to the forest floor, all, soon to fall away,
Tomorrow will be too late, It's now or never My love won't wait.
On the second pull, an avalanche of sawing roar ravaged the jungle, disturbing the birds, drowning out the rustle of billions of leaves blustering in the trade winds. Smokey cowered, but trusted his master implicitly. He bore the high-pitched, riotous sawing whines and grinds of the chainsaw with caution. Nonetheless, he was happy, in a tale-wagging excitement, as his master was at work. And there was no happier master than a master at work. Smokey wondered, wondered in deep dog-dimensional thinking, if today was a good day or a bad day, wondered if master would smile more often, if the wood would good to him this time. Well would it? Please! The whirring, buzzing, and whinnying saw changed the pitch and yaw of the forest as the biting blades savaged the tree's wood. Smokey backed away, remembering that one dark night by the pond. Remembering, watching the chainsaw with squinting eyes, clinched lips, entranced as the master cut, moved, cut and move over the decaying trunk. It was a dance only the master knew, only he understood; a lone dancer leading a noisy death machine of destruction in movements as lithe and gentle as any malevolent-and love-crazed male ballet dancer who'd encountered the malignant forest troll of the mind.
Like a willow, we would cry an ocean If we lost true love and sweet devotion It's now or never....
Cut and move, cut and move and he flew over the top of the mango tree's carcass --- inspired and mad possessed, screaming and singing, swiveling his hips in an Elvis mode of joyous certainty— it’s now or never—an elation only the mad-inspired artist knows. He perceived her freedom, her escape from the eternity of entrapment.
He felt the massive tree give way, crack underfoot, then slide-hesitantly, like she did in those first weeks of long-ago love, until she gave in to the pleasure of hands roving over soft skin, the swift grabbing frenzy, the frantic wanting, the needing of flesh, of souls entwined in the sum total of a once true love. With a snorting exhale, a deep inhale, he swung the chainsaw down hard for the last cut. She fell, she was free. She was his.
She was!
Cutting the saw's engine, jumping off her onto the soft jungle floor, he placed the hot chainsaw in the moist ferns and ran to a higher point in the valley. He turned to look at her in the raw, saw the blackness, the brownness, the bareness, her bark-shredded shards revealing a virgin wood, a virgin wood in grained tenderness. His artist muscles ached to gouge, chisel, sooth, and caress her ---his sculptor 's mind now alive, imagining her alive, his mind's eye seeing her fully formed into a revealed and renewed beauty. .... Six, eight weeks... Oh my darling, my darling, you'll be alive again! A half-ton of solid mango wood, fallen years ago, forgotten, captive to the dust-to-dust paradigm of a lonely decay. Staring at her in the wood he knew she yearned for loving transport to his studio, to be worked, handled, explored, penetrated and loved with a sculpture's hammering, chiseling, caressing, probing night after night, day after day, and in all the times in between. Oh! Those nights with her! What we did! What I would do for her! In the beautiful raw hunk of the mango tree trunk, he imagined the gentle cuts to be applied on grains, going with the grains, coaxing the grains in moving, curling, twisting sawing thrusts and sandpaper caresses around knots that were once limbs with the over and under curvilinear twists of magnificent colorations, of hues and aspects of a sculpture in perfection. Her ideal form—long perceived, long imagined, long dreamed of in perfect formulations. He had so much work to do to bring this wood back to life. I will it! I will do it! Smokey knew this piece of mango wood would vie for his master's attention. Nevertheless, it could end up near the pond. Like the last ones did, only to become fiery infernos of axed up and hacked up female forms. To watch his master sink into a place of dark dreams, into deteriorating days and the constant whippings of self-hatred was the one future he dreaded.
* The Kubota tractor was painted a bright orange, but rusted, scratched, dented and abused, like almost all of man's metal in the all consuming humidity, corroding, raining, ravaging, decaying, molding, musty, mildewy environmentally destructosystem called the rainforest. Kubo rolled strong and steady. He could depend on the small Kubota to do the grunt work of bringing his woman home to him. The rectangular mango block was only a half-ton. The relocation to his
studio would be a day's work---if it didn't rain, or mist, or drizzle, or pour, or monsoon-drench the life out of everything for an eternity of fortnights. Rainbows, rain forest, rain gear, rain boots, sucking mud, slipping, sliding, slopping. Goddamn I hate it when it rains! She hated the rain and the muddy waterfalls, the brown mud filled pond, the smell of constant rain, torrents of rain, never-ending down pours... like her last pleading tears, tears flowing endlessly from eyes so beguiling, over high cheek bones sharpen by the grindings of her infidelity.
The nine-foot long, five-foot wide extraction of solid mango wood burrowed through the soft humus soil on the winding forest road back towards home, back towards her place of honor in the studio. The trough it ploughed would wash away within a week, as they all had.
Towards sunset, the freed-up stump was situated on the revolving turnstile that would be her plinth. She would live and grow here until her last curve was fine sanded, oil-rubbed smooth, loved and caressed a million times. I won’t sleep until the moment the wood sings to me in a single voice, until she comes alive, until the last polishing of a soft clothe on wood. What if I do bring her alive? Will we sing as we once did? Singing in a single forest voice, like that last time together. Smokey witnessed the master shed a tear after a few minutes of gazing wide-eyed at the tree trunk. After ten more minutes of feely-touchy hands to wood, he began to cry in fantastic sobs, weeping in his madness, crying out the pain as only his artist-master would. The wood knows.... Smokey understood another period of hell might be his future. He'd keep an eye on the wood and the other eye on his tortured master. That wood... that wood would be a blessing or a curse.
* It was six weeks to the day and she was sculpted, finished, finito, wrapped-up, done, done, done! He knew the last stroke of a sculpture was an exercise in self-control--- he also knew when enough, was enough. He thought her perfect and vowed not to change a thing. He'd been down that road before. No one had seen her during rebirth. Carlton Lamb was not a gregarious man. Hermit was his designation from the community, and the first impression a layman or a lost tourist had of him. Artists in the Maui community called him brilliant, a mad soul, an enlightened sprit, but a soul caught in dark manifestations of a past affair of love’s unfairness. Bringing her to life had not been easy. Night after night under hot lighting needing to be adjusted and reconfigured in regard to luminosity, angle, and directions and shadows. Then there was the pesky trade wind drafts, dehydrating south wind drafts, queer drafts out of the east, and the never-ending moisture from the north. A wood-dusted grimy cake of wood shaving covered everything. The studio wreaked of rancid coffee smell, the decaying smell of old meals swarming with flies, the rotting smell of trashcans forgotten or ignored. His was a life crying out for any woman's touch. Carlton was a perfectionist in
everything he did when it came to art. However, his house, his dog, his personal hygiene all took a back seat to the woman in the wood. Smokey, a nervous and temperamental Weimaraner became even more anxious and hyper and only found solace in chewing his master's old shoes and howling at all phases of the moon. To placate him during the nights of rendering toil, chiseling trouble and furious sanding sessions towards perfections, Carlton tossed him any old shoe, new or old, anything to keep the dogs demands on him to a minimum. Carlton worked shoeless, pant less and shirtless. However, he wore leather chaps, gloves, a cap and safety glasses at all times, as foresight is always better than no sight. He considered it crass to be totally naked in front of her. To him, she was reborn in his studio, was his baby, his virgin, his magical invention and his soul’s creation. He covered her with a flowered eiderdown quilt his long-dead mother had sent him for those cold nights that never came to Hawaii.
* Skylar Fanourios was twenty years and of a friendship built on mutual need and jungle loneliness, although Carlton really had no friends except his wood and his dog. Skylar, an obnoxious fellow, butted into people lives whether they wanted him to or not. He was a driven soul, a musician, long established and talented, with an always-gigging income, a man always pushing people to develop their talents. "So man, what's the project keeping you from hanging out at Casanova's? Ain't seen you for months," Skylar told him, twisting and pulling on his long, bead-braided goatee and curled moustache. "Sky, what happened to your head? Man, you really look better bald, head shaved," Carlton said, in the distanced way he had with others. Skylar knew right way he was avoiding the question. "You ain't gonna throw me off the scent. You been hard at work on somethin' and Dude, your doggie looks like a mangy bastard. You haven't taken care of him, you look like shit and your hands look like you've been working in a friggin' granite quarry. Don't fuck with me, Carlton. What you been creating? And why ain't you got any coffee in this place for Christ sake?" Skylar had a way of cutting through the bullshit with people. His disarming smile always popped up and surprised people after his tirades and rants. Everyone knew their secrets were safe with Skylar. "Come into my studio," Carlton said, hesitancy in his voice. Smokey was up in a flash as he heard the inflection in his master's voice. He was talking about her, about the wood, about the one subject master loved more than him and life itself. Skylar also heard the proud inflections. Carlton Lamb had genius in him and as he followed him into his studio he recognized the confidence of creation in his friend's step, a lightness of being, a confidence of movement and a now lingering smile on his face. And that was a first! Carlton hadn't smiled for so many years. Since Stacy left him.
"I think it's pretty good," Carlton said, his smile larger, "I call her, Lamb of Life, Redux." Carlton placed his hands on the flowery quilt covering, moving it off. A well-rubbed and polished brown wood sculpted human foot was visible, but even this small teaser lite up Skylar's curiosity and admiration. "I ever tell you about my foot fetish, Carly? Jesus man, that's one sexy foot!" The quilt stopped moving. Carlton looked back at Skylar in anger. It was a look Skylar had seen before. Temperamental fucking artist, he thought, and returned a mirrored mean look and shook his fist at Carlton. "Look man, it really is one great lookin foot. Carly, dude, you need to lighten up! Learn how to take criticism or praise! Ain't like your gonna reveal Michelangelo's Pietà or David and set the fucking world on fire, are you? Ah, man, take the fuckin' tacky blanket off. Get on with it, haven’t I always been a straight shooter and honest with you? Carlton smiled, then pulled the quilt off in one swift movement. He walked to where Smoky sat chewing his boot. He finally, after so many months, sought strength and comfort by giving him a hug. Smokey leaned into his master with the affection and adoration of fifty dogs. Carlton watched Sky out of the corner of his eye. Knowing Skylar as he did, he expected an incisive cut-to-the-bone commentary of today's art world and Carlton's place in it, how he could climb the ladder of artistic success, gain money and fame, chicks galore, and kudos from all the lonely people dying for a fulfilled life through art and to willing to part with big money. And so on and so on, Skylar was a true master of flinging the bullshit... or to admiration and reverence for the truth when revealed to him. Skylar removed off his signature, fly-eyed sunglasses and moved to different locations in the room. He adjusted the overhead light for more intensity, and then turned the lights off, casting the room in its ghost shadows and melancholic moods that now began talking to Carlton. Still alive, even in the dark, in the shadows, in an afterlife... darling, my darling Carlton. Yes, share my love, your love with others. Skylar remained silent, arms akimbo, head turning back and forth on a veined neck, viewing the sculpture head to foot, face to toes. Carlton observed tears in Skylar's eyes, then saw those tears and more rolling down both of his cheeks. Contemplating, wondering, pondering, the parts and parcels of arts messages.... Instead of saying something, which he usually always did, Skylar left the studio and went to the edge of the property to a place of plant tendrils, giant leaves and clingy vines where the deep jungle began. Carlton watched him wipe his eyes with his hands and wondered if he was ill. With Smokey at his side, he walked closer towards him. "Hey Sky, what's up? You all right, man? You sick, or what?" "Oh brother, I tell you dude, you've done it Carlton! Carlton Lamb, your fuckin name will go down in the history of sculpture, of art forever and ever. I've have never in my life seen a work of art so fucking beautiful. I have chills and shivers from looking at her. You did it Carlton! You brought Anastasia Lamb back— I am so fucking proud of you dude!"
Sky never lied, nor did he often give deep emotional and heartfelt praise, but Carlton realize Sky had placed and arm around his shoulders and kept shaking his head in some kind of wonderment, repeating over and over, " You did it, man, you did it. She's so ... ! Your art dream is realized. You did it man! Send Stacy a photo of this!" "No way. Anastasia’s in Bali or Java or somewhere down south. I'll never disturb her again."
* A month later the word had spread. The gallery representatives rolled in, the local news hounds arrived, the Honolulu glossy mags and eZines sent in stringers to get the scoop, snap the shots, pump a meager artist's grateful and grasping hand. They all arrived with their professional art baggage, slinging big words of art and money and who's who of what's what. They lectured and cajoled Carly-baby about how tiny artists types became grand master's of men and vision once the mass media mavens of refined culture took notice, gave them the boost up to fame and fortune. For a percentage, for a cut of the action, for the connections, of course. Carlton refused them all. A personality thing, as every personality outside of Skylar's and Smokey's he considered aliens from another time and place and mindset and dimension. And the word got around in the island art world that Carlton was an anti-social prick. The minions of the press and arty-world were not kind to him. When the furor died down, Carlton was happy. Anastasia was back in his life. And she was all that mattered. But a good man, Clark DeMain, an art critic on vacation, contacted Skylar about the sculpture. They simply sneaked in one day when Carlton was out looking for scraps of wood to carve his livelihood of tiki gods and wooden tiki torches for tourists. The studio was dark, the quilt over the wood. Skylar told DeMain to close his eyes, then he flipped on the light and off came the quilt. "Clark, open up your eyes to experience artistic perfection." At first, DeMain said nothing. He smiled to Skylar, cynical eyebrows signaling a New York spate of mind. Skylar flipped the overhead working lights on; the wood's sheen came alive in depths of color and resonance and magic. DeMain circled the sculpture four times, like a jungle cat evaluating a carcass that might be alive. He knelt down, cheek-to-cheek with the face of Anastasia Lamb, her looking up at him with what he thought were the eyes of God's favorite angel. Her face held his attention, as if he were drugged beyond the ability to respond. He reached out, ran the gentle and soft the tips of his fingers over the lips, and nose, and over the eyes. He shook his head, his eyes grew misty, tears fell and then he sobbed aloud. "Oh, my God, Skylar, this is excellence. I’ve never... I've never seen a sculpture of this caliber in my entire life. Thank you, Skylar. I thank you for making an old and jaded art critic happy. I've witnessed a work of art that is truly immaculate and transcendent."
After DeMain's articles in Art Forum and Art For Art's Sake, the world beat a path to Carlton Lamb's door. The masses no longer came as boisterous mad dogs and greedy and selfish men, but as humble artists and critics with understandings of life and love built into their souls. All proclaimed Carlton Lamb the modern day Michelangelo in unassuming and sincere praise. The offers, the commissions flowed in. With recognition, Carlton found resolution for the pain from Anastasia deserting him. However, he never allow the sculpture out of the studio, never allowed photographs and allowed only 250 limited edition bronzes, at one-quarter size, to be cast.
* During a full moon night in a humid October, Carlton sat in the darkened studio, across from his Anastasia with Smokey at his feet. He watched the variations of moonlight play across her wooden, but so alive face. He let himself slide back into memories of tenderness for her and those final moments of her supplication by her side at the pond... before she turned on him. But then he spotted a flaw! A flaw over her right eye! It was only a millimeter high protrusion on her right eyelid. He jumped up, flipped on all the studio lights. The bright light washed out the imperfection, so he dimmed the rheostat and in near darkness the flaw reappeared. Grabbing a sharp texturing tool and fine wet sandpaper, he sat to work correcting this almost imperceptible flaw. Smokey sat behind him transfixed, for he had assumed the lady in the wood languished in a peaceful sleep forever. Gently moving the tool over the eyelid, he probed into the wood, only a nano-fraction of an inch above the flaw. And then, out of nowhere, Smokey barked. Loud. Demanding. For reasons only he knew. Carlton's tool slipped, taking the interior of the eye out in one sudden movement. He reeled back as he realized the extent of the damage—destroyed— corrupted! Anastasia Lamb starred at him with one beautiful, ever-lasting eye next to a socket of black nothingness. "You fucking dog!" he yelled and swung the gouging tool back at Smokey in anger, the tool going deep into his broad chest in the vicinity of his heart. Smokey crumpled to the floor, then righted himself as the master swung again, this time striking his eye, ending his binocular vision. As the master pulled back a violent hand for another swing, the wounded dog leapt up. In a limping run he was out the door and heading towards the jungle. Crazed mad --- Anastasia destroyed, no longer perfect, no longer divine--- All the memories of her violent murder reemerged in him, took control of a mind anchored to sanity by this one magnificent work of art. Running to the house, he fetched his shotgun and then upon return, fired 20 rounds into the wood that was her soul. Her flawed and taunting spirit now despoiled and defiled forever ignited his angered and deranged soul. He fired up the chainsaw, gripped the handle and hacked into her with a ferocious and trembling vengeance. With the other hand he swung his ax in screaming, down-pounding violent arcs. "Wink at him, will you! Fuck him right under my nose! You fucking whore! You slut whore! You cunt! I killed you once and I'll kill you again!"
He yielded the chainsaw for what seemed like hours, savaging the wood as he witnessed recurrent ghostly manifestations of her all about his studio. Her taunting apparitions mocking him in the window's reflections and skylights, squatting in corners, while naked and shitting and pissing and laughing at him. She appeared on the ceiling in the frenzied shadows play of his fully illuminated violent movements. He imagined her sitting at his desk, laughing shrikes of hatred at him and cracking the glass to their wedding photo into a million shards, then demonically torching their wedding photo. She ridiculed and mocked him with that echoing nasal laugh of hers, which only stoked his insanity to new phantasmagoric heights. The chainsaw puttered to a stop, out of gas, hazy grey-blue wisps of acrid smoke curled around his arm and the hot handle, the chainsaw now his eternal handshake with his devil. All that remained in pristine condition was the arm he'd first envision so many months ago. It had somehow escaped the carnage and still, as he stared at it, the tip of her finger beckoned him to return to the pond, her memory and her loving corpse. His heart sank lower upon seeing Smokey's blood trailing out the studio door. Smokey's place of refuge was the pond, the waterfall, the place where the three of them had spent so much time loving and growing together in devotion... until that night. He picked up the pristine unscathed wooden arm of Anastasia and ran to rescue his dog. Smokey was the last being on earth he wanted to hurt. His tears surged for his dog, nearly blinding him, yet in a redeeming way let him focus his mind, experience goodness within by feeling pity for the living and the loved. "Oh I have done such bad thing! Forgive me, oh Lord, forgive me. Let him be alive!" He ran hard along the trail to the waterfall. However, the hallucinations, the October full moon's eerie light brought Anastasia back to life once again. She appeared to him, standing erect, ephemeral and shimmering on the flat, stillness of their pond in the far distance. She laughed at him in that mean and unmistakable, heart- puncturing and piercing nasal laugh of hers. He covered his ears with his filthy hands, tried to force her out of his mind, but still she laughed. But her laughs turned to screams, identical to the night screams of her murder and blood-spattering dismemberment. Reeling, but still determined, he found the strength to carry on, knowing he had to save his precious dog. To set things right, he is but an innocent... In the bright October full moonlight, he viewed fresh blood on the trail and prayed he wasn’t too late. He tucked the wooden arm next to his body and ran forward at full speed. Fifty yards from the pond he sighted Smokey, heard him moaning in an awful agony. The wounded dog lay prostrate a top the earth where master had buried Anastasia's numerous body parts. He pawed the ground with front paws, whimpering his last imploring exhales, pleading with her to help his master, to sooth his angry soul and to allow the both of them to die peacefully in her arms. "No! Smokey, you will not die on me! " Carlton yelled as he flew down the mud-slick trail. In his haste, he tripped, fell, knowing he would recover, then get up unharmed and save his beloved dog's life. However, upon rising, Anastasia's wooden arm protruded from his chest cavity. He thought it only a strange night vision, a metaphoric hallucination, an inspiration revealed, an artist's intuition showing him a vision for his next sculpture, but this inspiration was accompanied by unbelievable physical pain.
The surreal turned to true reality as he sank back into the thick moist floor of the jungle, knowing she had literally touched his heart again. He looked down to examine her arm projecting out of his chest. The arm had inserted cleanly, permanently and his lifeblood seeped out. The wooden arm reached deep into him, her beckoning finger having punctured his heart. "Thank you my Anastasia, my darling," he exhaled, with a deep sigh and an accepting smile. He laughed loud, and then said to her, as she stood before him once again in her shimmering illusory allure, "The suffering is over for both of us, Anastasia. Grant me one wish, my darling. Tell me we can be together in death forever." “—“ "No? You bitch! NO!" In the near distance, Carlton realized Smokey now lie forever silent, eyes closed, at peace, in an eternity of guarding Anastasia’s earthen grave. Carlton fell back to a prone position, his head settling into the cool jungle mud. Looking up through the jungle’s massive Koa and Mango trees, he beheld the sun’s rays flittering between a billion leaves, tenuous cloud pillows of brilliant white drifting by in the trade winds, eclipsing the infinity of blue sky... slowly fading, darkening, blackening into the final dream no man wants to dream....
