Joshua Mansfield and Sheri Zod

By Ainy Rainwater

This whimsical short novel is a story about choices, about what happens (for better or worse) when people step off the beaten path. Joshua Mansfield and Sheri Zod journey through a fantastic, allegorical American Southwest accompanied---or led---by totem animals or spirit guides. At first they both seem to be finally escaping the life of an older "career" student, but the apparently chance finding of a discarded letter initiates a quest to find out what happened to a pair of lovers, Joan and Karl, thirty years earlier---a story which increasingly resonates with Joshua and Sheri.

Along the way they meet ghosts, sad machines, baffling art, mirages, mysterious figures in a literally petrified forest, a hostel for lost souls, and a cafe for lost dreams as they search for what happened to Joan who ventured off the beaten path a generation earlier. Instead of a travel journal, Joshua writes stories in his notebook, creating interrelated allegories which are as real as the strange world they travel through. It is a journey both inward and outward as Joshua and Sheri are both in their own way "lost souls" navigating the shifting sands between odd cities in a world which is magical, futuristic, and anachronistic, but recognizable because there is an underlying truth to it. In flashbacks we see that being adrift is for both of them uniquely tied to their drive. What---if anything---can finally anchor them?

As mysterious encounters and the discovery of clues, artifacts and magical objects increase it begins to look like the universe is trying to tell them something...or perhaps Joan is...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ainy Rainwater
• Release date: Jul 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9780982959732

Ainy Rainwater

Ainy Rainwater has been writing and publishing short stories, essays, and novels in various genres for about 30 years. She lives in the greater Houston area with her husband and rescue dogs. She enjoys reading, writing, playing guitar and percussion, gardening, knitting, tea, baking and other kitchen improvisations, daydreaming, and wasting time online.Her novels are available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, and other bookstores. She is presently working on a chick lit fantasy series as well as a number of side projects, including a sequel to If Wishes Were Spaceships, a science fiction novel published in March 2016.She is also known for the digital pop which she makes under the name Gymshoes. "Everest Sunrise" was featured in the documentary What It Takes. After hurricanes Katrina and Rita she released an EP of songs, A Tropical Depression, the profits of which go to benefit the American Red Cross. Gymshoes albums are available from iTunes, Amazon, and other online stores. For more about Gymshoes music, please see Gymshoesmusic.com, which has liner notes, links to social media, streaming music, and much more.You can find the author on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. She occasionally contributes to the group food blog, The Usual Suspects: http://usualsuspects.wordpress.com and posts short miscellaneous things on The Mighty Microblog: http://ainyrainwater.wordpress.com. A Truant Disposition, http://truantdisposition.com is Ainy Rainwater's official author site.

Book preview

Joshua Mansfield and Sheri Zod

by

Ainy Rainwater

Copyright Idiolith, Idiolith Books, 2011

Smashwords Edition

E-ISBN: 978-0-9829597-3-2

Cover Art: Ainy Rainwater

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events are fictional and any resemblance to persons living or dead, real places, or events is coincidental. Names of people, places, and things are fictional and wholly imaginary, and should not be construed as having any relationship to people, places, or things with similar names that may exist. As this is a work of fiction, some things exist in this story that do not exist in real life. The views expressed in this work of fiction serve the purpose of character and story and are not necessarily those of the publisher or the author.

For Robert

Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?

Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

---Walt Whitman Song of the Open Road

Table of Contents

Joshua Mansfield---Bear Hunter

Sheri Zod---Tiger Tamer

Exit Pursued By Bear

Lions and Tigers and Bears---Oh My!

Barking Dogs Don't Bite

My Darling Karl

Elvis Didn't Sleep Here

Haiku For Two

Key Signature

Terra Incognita

Cowboy Town

Wynken, Blynken, And Nod

Raining Cats and Dogs

The Fountain Of Youth

Sweat Dreams

Photographs By The Roadside

A Bright Invisible Green

Untethered

Rich and Careless

Up

An Allegory In Familiar Territory

The Petrified Forest

Bogelygo

A Ghost Story

The Dream Café

Everything They Do Not Know

The Great Divide

Rupert

Wish I Was Here

Guitar Joe Meets Nearly Ellie

Compass On A Keyring

How To Survive In The Desert

Lost Souls

Three Lives For Two Coins

Dangerous Women

Close To The Edge

Sea Fever

Her Animal Heart

Goodnight, Again

Author's Note

About The Author

Idiolith

Idiolith Books by Ainy Rainwater

Albums by Gymshoes (Ainy Rainwater)

Joshua Mansfield---Bear Hunter

The skies were clear, but the humidity was so high it seemed that all that would be needed to produce rain would be for the right person to snap their fingers. Even the sun appeared as nothing so much as a sodden sponge in the sky.

Joshua Mansfield took a deep breath of the shimmering air. He swallowed and sat down on the bench. It was the end of the semester, August-hot, and he held in his hand the grade report with the C on it. He had let it be known that if he didn't receive a fair grade in the class he would take it to the Department Head: several other students were willing to back him up. He thought about that first day of class. The professor had looked at him and said, Ah, I see we have Mr. Mansfield with us. Then he had smiled a nasty little smile. Joshua walked around the campus all afternoon with that grade report. Then he quit his job at Wakame Burger and sat outside the student center watching the fountain until sometime early that evening when he saw the bear.

Sheri Zod---Tiger Tamer

Sheri Zod, like Joshua, had spent too many years at the university. She came from a wealthy indulgent family, so she never worked; she went to school full-time and had had seven different majors. Because she changed majors so frequently she had a new faculty adviser each year. Nevertheless, word was getting out about her: her current adviser was sitting in his office this August, and in anticipation of her mercurial moods, was thinking of a way of enticing her into sticking with anthropology.

She'd had him last year in Introduction to Archaeology, though his specialty was Indian Civilizations of the Southwest. He wanted her to go with him and some other pet students on a dig in October. He felt that she was very intelligent (she was) but basically lost and in dire need of some marvelous experience (like the dig) to give her hands on involvement in her field of study (to win her permanent allegiance to anthropology). They had quarreled over this dig trip since near the end of the last semester. Sheri was firm in her decision that she would not go. Many discussions had followed that first one. She had a recurring nightmare about being trapped in some ancient cliff dwelling and not being able to leave. He was becoming so insistent that Sheri had decided to change her major as soon as the Fall semester began: she feared he would pull some silly academic requirement and insist that she join the other hapless souls he had recruited.

The summer semester had ended. Everyone around her was babbling or bitching about their grade report. She was a straight A student who took only classes she was interested in. Knowledge, not graduation, was her goal. The list of classes she wanted to take grew and shrank every year. It was considerably shorter than when she started. And now, with two more Anthropology classes left, she was being forced to move on by this eager professor-adviser who thought she was brilliant and probably had the hots for her. She sat on a wooden bench under a live oak thinking about it all. She was a firefly---energetic, forever flying and giving off light. Always she made her own choices and did exactly what she wanted to do.

A hot breeze stirred the leaves over her head. It was almost one o' clock: she had an appointment (made at his request) with her faculty adviser. She sat there and thought of the last couple of semesters. She realized, it just isn't fun anymore. It seemed like someone was always nagging her to do something, and always the pressure from everyone to, "get a degree plan nailed down and graduate...you only lack a couple of required classes." No, it's just not the same, she thought. The clock was just striking one o' clock when she first noticed the tiger.

He was sprawled on the grass in front of a bench nearly touching the feet of the couple sitting there. Sheri froze. With alarms sounding in her head, she looked all around. What's the gimmick? she thought. No one seemed alarmed by the tiger. No one seemed to notice the tiger. It could have been a joke, but the tiger was not leashed. He was sunning himself, in all his Bengal beauty. Now the thought of how-did-he-get-there-without-me-seeing-him was joining in the confusion of what's-he-doing-here and why-isn't-anybody-else-noticing in Sheri's brain. In the back of her mind she could hear herself chanting:

I'm seeing things

I'm seeing things

I am going crazy

Stark raving mad

...over and over again. A headline flashed: SHERI ZOD ZAPS OUT, with the sub-caption: Student Under Sedation In Sanitarium.

In a moment the chorus of voices thinned out. One thought rang in her mind like a bell: I'm going to make it go away. Away. Away. Away... She stood up and walked determinedly toward the tiger who rapidly awakened from what Sheri thought must have been a feigned sleep. Don't be silly, she told herself, "a hallucination cannot feign sleep. The tiger stretched and padded off toward the Biology building, rounded a corner, and was out of sight. When Sheri reached the corner he was gone. There! I've chased him away!" she thought. But still, there was a vague feeling of disappointment, so she strolled through the area and around the other buildings just in case he should reappear. But no, it seemed that he had made a clean getaway. A feeling of relief was beginning to settle over her along with a certain shakiness about the knees. She eased herself down on the steps of the Chemistry building, drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her forehead on them. When she looked up there were two tigers (one a white Bengal) circling The Old Moldy Thing about 30 meters away.

The Old Moldy Thing was a student colloquialism for a piece of sculpture of various metals and alloys which had not weathered well. It was actually quite modern, an abstract which was perhaps more interesting than the artist had intended because of the splotches, color changes, algae, fungus, oxidation and other unforeseen depredations of nature---like the bushel of wet oak leaves which stuck to its various configurations throughout most of the winter. It was a blobish sort of thing, with a purposely pitted surface which squirrels buried nuts in, and projections looping widely out into the air at strange angles, like a giant amoeba trying to catch and swallow a butterfly. Strangely, the plaque at the base read, Still Life. No one in the Art Department knew what to make of it. Apparently neither did the tigers.

An electric charge shot through Sheri when she saw them. She remained transfixed, not moving nor breathing as the tigers padded away from the sculpture, obviously unimpressed. Only after some minutes had passed and the beasts had stopped to wrestle playfully on the grass near the Old Physics building (which now served as headquarters for an unlikely assortment of student organizations) did Sheri move. She jumped up suddenly and began to run across the grass and sidewalk toward them. The play was ending, though: one tiger briskly cuffed the other and then loped away with the rebuffed tiger trailing slightly behind and Sheri boldly in pursuit.

And so the afternoon passed quickly as the tigers ranged the campus and Sheri followed as if hypnotized by some mad scientist. She was no longer questioning or confused. Something in her brain had accepted the unreal reality of this situation, just as it accepts movies when we go to the theater or dreams when we sleep. Thus the dichotomy of something that seemed so real versus the logical position that it was not real, was resolved. As the afternoon turned to twilight Sheri found herself wondering, "Isn't it getting dark awfully early for August?" When she looked at her watch she was startled by