An Idle Fellow

Photo by Nikita Nikitenko on Unsplash

by Kate Chopin

Now and then, we publish vintage stories from historic authors. This was originally published in 1893.

I am tired. At the end of these years I am very tired. I have been studying in books the languages of the living and those we call dead. Early in the fresh morning I have studied in books, and throughout the day when the sun was shining; and at night when there were stars, I have lighted my oil-lamp and studied in books. Now my brain is weary and I want rest.

I shall sit here on the door-step beside my friend Paul. He is an idle fellow with folded hands. He laughs when I upbraid him, and bids me, with a motion, hold my peace. He is listening to a thrush’s song that comes from the blur of yonder apple-tree. He tells me the thrush is singing a complaint. She wants her mate that was with her last blossom-time and builded a nest with her. She will have no other mate. She will call for him till she hears the notes of her beloved-one’s song coming swiftly towards her across forest and field.

Paul is a strange fellow. He gazed idly at a billowy white cloud that rolls lazily over and over along the edge of the blue sky.

He turns away from me and the words with which I would instruct him, to drink deep the scent of the clover-field and the thick perfume from the rose-hedge.

We rise from the door-step and walk together down the gentle slope of the hill; past the apple-tree, and the rose-hedge; and along the border of the field where wheat is growing. We walk down to the foot of the gentle slope where women and men and children are living.

Paul is a strange fellow. He looks into the faces of people who pass us by. He tells me that in their eyes he reads the story of their souls. He knows men and women and the little children, and why they look this way and that way. He knows the reasons that turn them to and fro and cause them to go and come. I think I shall walk a space through the world with my friend Paul. He is very wise, he knows the language of God which I have not learned.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Kate Chopin (1850-1904) was an American author of short stories and novels, best known today for her 1899 novel The Awakening. Her works were often criticized as controversial or immoral, and she did not have financial success with her writing, but after her death she was recognized as a leading writer of her time.

 

The Night Came Slowly

by Kate Chopin

Just for fun, we occasionally publish vintage stories from historic authors.

I am losing my interest in human beings; in the significance of their lives and their actions. Some one has said it is better to study one man than ten books. I want neither books nor men; they make me suffer. Can one of them talk to me like the night – the Summer night? Like the stars or the caressing wind?

The night came slowly, softly, as I lay out there under the maple tree. It came creeping, creeping stealthily out of the valley, thinking I did not notice. And the outlines of trees and foliage nearby blended in one black mass and the night came stealing out from them, too, and from the east and west, until the only light was in the sky, filtering through the maple leaves and a star looking down through every cranny.

The night is solemn and it means mystery.

Human shapes flitted by like intangible things. Some stole up like little mice to peep at me. I did not mind. My whole being was abandoned to the soothing and penetrating charm of the night.

The katydids began their slumber song: they are at it yet. How wise they are. They do not chatter like people. They tell me only: “sleep, sleep, sleep.” The wind rippled the maple leaves like little warm love thrills.

Why do fools cumber the Earth! It was a man’s voice that broke the necromancer’s spell. A man came to-day with his “Bible Class.” He is detestable with his red cheeks and bold eyes and coarse manner and speech. What does he know of Christ? Shall I ask a young fool who was born yesterday and will die tomorrow to tell me things of Christ? I would rather ask the stars: they have seen him.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Kate Chopin (1850-1904) was an American author of short stories and novels, best known today for her 1899 novel The Awakening. Her works were often criticized as controversial or immoral, and she did not have financial success with her writing, but after her death she was recognized as a leading writer of her time.

 

Prenuptial Consultation

Photo by Meizhi Lang on Unsplash

Creative non-fiction
by Claire Massey

The birth charts are printed on heavy vita paper, the kind that resists thinning over time. The astrologer slides my father’s across the table. He should have lived, she says, by the sea, an inlet, a cove, a way to the gulf. He would have been happy. I nod my head, remembering how Dad trucked his sailboat for miles across featureless plains, to launch in reservoirs and lakes, manmade. Divorce forced the sale of his Flying Scott.

Now the mystic’s long, tapered fingers hover over my birth chart. There’s a legacy of longing to be near the water, she says, that’s where you should live. With a partner yearning for peace.

Our joint attention turns to the life path my mother trod. As if the tips of fingers can sense danger, the astrologer barely touches this chart. My mother once studied a palmistry book, Fortune in Your Hand. I remember her comparing the tangled mass in her palm, the zig-zagging lines of head and heart, to the cover’s ideal map, the lifeline with its gentle, doable slope gracefully curving to end at the deep wrist ring. Your mom was overtaken, the astrologer explains, by nervous exhaustion. You too, must guard against this kind of darkness.

We end with the synastry chart, his fate and mine, entwined within a circle divided into houses of experience yet to be lived. With one hand the astrologer feels the smooth-textured paper, places the other on her heart. I know you wanted another who craved conquest, adventure, but that was not meant to be. This man will be a foil for your troubles, his love a sheltering refuge. Do live with a view of a bay or an ocean, face east in the morning, meditate on every solar return, palms cupped like vessels storing life-giving waters.

Epilogue

We have been married forty years.
Sometimes late at night,
when the moon is on the build
in a fertile sign, we sit on our porch,
among aging pines and crepe myrtles
planted long ago.
Sometimes when unpredictable winds
change course, we hear the give and take
of the surf, ever in tandem
with the shifting tides, the cosmic plan.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Claire Massey’s work appears in many journals, including Bright Flash, Streetlight Magazine, IO Journal, Fictive Dream, Literally Stories, Barely South Review, Wilderness House, Writer Advice, and in her collection, Driver Side Window. She appreciates stories with a deep depth to length ratio and treasures her copy of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.