Twelve Stories Rising

By Eldon Arkinstall

Twelve Stories Rising's stories are tenderly taken from events people form from the magic of being, magic wielded according to their understanding. Many within Twelve Stories Rising know of life's magic, many do not. There is the magic of life and its perfect permission for anyone to be whatever they want.

Here are the twelve stories in Twelve Stories Rising:

1. In the Sauna - A woman wants to know about her father.
2. Tobogganing - There's this hill, this tree and this kid.
3. My Cousin’s Girl - One man's loss becomes another man's - gain?
4. C’mon! - Take a trip with a stranger.
5. Exotics - Mexico is hot, Too hot?
6. Intersections in Time - Her father lives...again.
7. Concrete Construction #1 - Can a handicapped man cut it when the big concrete pour goes down?
8. Breathe - They'll take everything you have, then the thieves move in.
9. Gold! - It won't buy everything, but it might buy enough.
10. The Big Three - Butts, booze, and gambling are big alright - too big.
11. Stopped - A country squeezes and squeezes until thing...just...stop.
12. An Enlightened Christmas - Gifts come in many ways. Some are celestial.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eldon Arkinstall
• Release date: Oct 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310190872

Eldon Arkinstall

Eldon Arkinstall is an author, poet, and freelance writer from British Columbia, Canada. He has worked in civil engineering, and travelled the world involved in commercial trade. In 2010, he earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Creative Writing from Vancouver Island University, in Nanaimo, BC.Finally, can you please leave a review and a rating for any of his works you choose to read.

Book preview

Twelve Stories Rising

By

Eldon Arkinstall

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An Imprint of Arkinstall Enterprises

Twelve Stories Rising: Copyright ©2015 by Eldon Arkinstall

First Edition

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Also by Eldon Arkinstall

Novels:

Songs in the Key of Abundance

Tripping Into Mexico

Available in e-book at http://www.smashwords.com

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First Edition Notes:

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this collection are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and in no way represent or portray anyone alive.

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Table of Contents

In the Sauna

Tobogganing

My Cousin’s Girl

C’mon!

Exotics

Intersections in Time

Concrete Construction #1

Breathe

Gold!

The Big Three

Stopped

An Enlightened Christmas

In the Sauna

The cedar lined sauna was quiet for a change; most of the hordes of kids who used the small pool outside our windowed door gone home for dinner, their replacements not yet arrived. Those little buggers had filled the place to its acoustic brim with screams, yells, hollers, and bellows to the max. I sat in the quiet of the small hot sauna and sniffed for the smell of cedar to cover the stink of sweat not washed out often enough, given the circumstances. I thought about life, it being an interest of mine. I thought about my spirit and I thought about how reality emerged and I barely needed to move to make it happen. I marvelled at its ease, and I sweated. I felt as if I was melting. A big bellied woman, fourty-two years old, with long grey hair and a long sad face came into the sauna.

Hi Warren, she said as she groaned her way onto the top bench above me and to my left.

Hi Tess. How’s it going?

Oh, it’s alright, I guess. Tess always seemed gloomy.

Yeah. It is alright, isn’t it.

She settled in and slowly began to sweat out the stuff of her days. I was already well sheened in my own slick liquids. I checked a drop falling from my finger, held it aloft so the light shone through. It was grey. I needed more water, and more sweat, would sweat until my drops turned clear. Then I’d go. I stood to stretch. Tess watched. I was in good shape from yoga and swimming. My hair was long and light brown, my eyes clear and grey. I could easily touch the roof with my hands. I bent to my toes until my spine popped.

You look like you’re from Denmark or Sweden or somewhere, Tess said. Her head lowered towards her chest.

Close! I replied. "I’m Canadian, but my grandparents are from Finland and England.

I’ve been looking into my ancestry since Mom died, Tess said, Five years ago now.

Yes, I remember, I said. She died around the time my Ma died.

Both my parents are gone, Tess said.

Mine too, I answered.

We fell silent, I into memories of Ma, Tess wherever she went. Ma was always kind to me, solid in her slow way, wanted only happiness for her kids. She was a good Ma. She was a beaten Ma too.

We came from Europe, Tess said. She paused and we settled some more in the way people in high heat slowly slump into themselves. My father was not a kind man.

Mine neither, Tess.

Really? She spoke in a high questioning voice that sank to quiet at the end of the word. My dad was a liar too.

I shook my head. My Da was lazy, unhappy, always thought he could do better, but never did anything but bitch and drink and when he drank, he raged and swung his fists at the world. I don’t know if my dad lied, I said.

I don’t understand Dad, Tess cried, Or any of my family, and yet, you know, I need to know who we are. You know?

I can dig it. I have family too.

Because it was not a good childhood, you see, Tess explained. I never knew who he was, or why he was, until…

Yes?

She stared at me, then fell silent. A pair of young, giggly teens came in; lasses whose curves were coming out. They looked at Tess and I and climbed to the top row of benches to settle behind me. They whispered to each other.

He changed his name! He never told me, Tess cried. Then she quieted. One day I brought home a form from school to allow me to go to camp. The form needed his name and birthdate. I gave it to him. We sat in the kitchen. It was hot, humid, you know? He looked at the form, threw it down, and said, do I have to sign this? Yes, I said, so I can go to camp. Alright, he said and picked it up and signed it and threw it down again. I picked it up, and read his name, and it was not the name I knew. I thought about it as she peered within herself to sort her memories. What a strange way to find out your Da’s name! It wasn’t the name I knew, she said so quiet it might have been to herself. In the small space you could hear people breathe when it got quiet enough. But the pool outside our door murmured so I leaned her way to hear. She raised her head. Her thick, long, grey hair lay limp on her skull and shoulders as she sat, one leg cocked up to rest her elbow on, with her chin on her fist. She gazed my way. I was eight years old when I found out my father’s real name!

That must have been a shocker, I said. Tess stayed mum as her head nodded agreement to my observation. Drops dripped down. Where was he from? I asked.

Ukraine.

Ah, I see. You know, immigrants changed their names when they came to North America. Why my own grandmother landed at Ellis Island in New York, come from Finland.

You’ve been there?

Yes, it’s a great cold northern land. Gramma went to North Dakota, but I figure that wasn’t cold enough, cause she hightailed it to Northern Alberta, arriving in a sled pulled by dogs! Can you dig it? It’s cold up there too.

That’s so, Tess said as she watched me speak. Colder then, than now.

It was! It is! They went homesteading and got one hundred and sixty acres of good land. All that land! Well, she changed her name from Jukka to Jensen, then married a Swede named Ekbom.

The girls behind me giggled.

That’s going backwards! Tess said and laughed.

I know!

Well, just so for my family too, Tess exclaimed. Our real name’s Karamazov, but they changed it to Cramer. The government gave land to us too. We got one hundred and fourty acres.

That’s a lot of land, I said.

My family bought more land, and sold some too, around Winnipeg, Tess said. She stared at me and nodded her head, We eventually had a section; six hundred and fourty acres, about two hundred and sixty hectares I guess, measured now. She said this as though acknowledging the teens who grew up in metric measured Canada. I can’t find out what happened to all that land.

Keep digging, I said in humour.

She laughed. I will.

We still got land up in the Peace country of Alberta, I said, then took a big glug of water. But I don’t know how much, and hey it doesn’t matter because not a square inch belongs to me. I don’t know that side of the family much. I turned my head all the way around to look at her. She sweated in the dry heat. Dad left, so I never knew any of those guys. I wearily swung my head back.

Really? she asked. I nodded. Her face slumped as she relaxed even more.

Really. He and Ma didn’t get along at the end.

That’s sad.

Yes.

A big man entered the sauna and brought cool air with him. He climbed to the top bench to my right and away from the two teens, to sit in the shadow of a burnt out light. He settled in. We nodded at each other. I’d seen him often, spoken with him seldom. He was quiet, a brooding fellow, with a paunch and ghostly white skin that turned red in the heat.

Hi Tess, he said.

She smiled and said, Hi Darren.

We fell silent.

He’s dead now, I said, after the quiet went on for a comfortable while. I jerked my head up. Hey Tess, we’re orphans!

We are, Tess murmured.

Humph, Darren rumbled as if bothered by my noise in the tiny room.

Hey! I cried, An orphan has special status. Why we’re given a more room, allowed a touch more…madness, given a shade more of the love, or feeling anyways, we give each other, but usually only in passing.

Perhaps, Tess said as she smiled a soft thing at my enthusiasm for orphans.

We’re older orphans, I said quietly. Kids need parents.

We are, Tess said. They do.

We do, Darren whispered as if he’d found the answer to some question in his mind.

Sweat dripped from Tess’s high round cheeks as she said. So I had to know who I was, you see?

I do. Did your family farm the land?

Oh yes, we lived on the farm. I remember it well. Those times were good until the dry times. The fields, why we covered them in golden wheat and had a great vegetable garden where my father loved to grow things. That man could grow anything: juicy red tomatoes, delicious white potatoes, red onions, garlic…anything! And I remember skies so blue you could pull a daub of paint from it, then snag a fluffy cloud and slap it onto a canvas, and boy oh boy…it was that pretty. Tess’s head lifted from her chest so sweat flew off her nose. Even when we moved to the city Dad grew vegetables in the yard. I love dirt. He taught me that. He had a real green thumb. Her head slowly lowered as the heat relaxed tense muscles.

Nice, I said. I only met my dad once, and he taught me how to sucker punch someone.

Darren let out a gust of breath.

What’s a sucker punch? Tess asked.

Oh, you know, when you pretend you’re afraid so the guy gets close, then you unload on his nose and drop him like a bag of bones.

You sound…sad, Tess said.

Nah, just…disappointed. Well hell, I got a right to be! I’m civil engineering, see, and then I found out Dad used to build roads. We coulda’ been contendahs, I said in my best ringside voice, He could have taught me so much. I shook my head hard. Sweat rained. I watched it fall to the floor. Oh, sorry, I said to the teens behind. Did I get you?

It’s alright, one managed to say through their giggle fit. I was glad they were comfortable.

You got brothers? Tess said.

One brother, one sister, I replied. I shifted my head a tiny bit so grey drops fell to blots, forming patterns I filled in the brown tiles at my feet. The floor was a wet, slick mess from too much sweat and not enough heat or cleansing water. It grossed me out, but where could a tired guy go? Every pool for fifty miles, but that one, shut their doors for a month of maintenance resulting in a month of crowding and bitching from regulars who came to the old pool every day for their fix of heat. Because we were a big town, we had two pools. Folks travelled from down-Island, Duncan way, and up-Island too, from Parksville even, to get their dose of heat in cold and wet Nanaimo. I met folks I mostly liked, and got my heat hit. I could stand the crowds for a few weeks. That day was strangely quiet.

I was a wanderer and an orphan, fourty-five years old and four years graduated from the local university. I planned to head up Vancouver Island to another sauna in Courtenay, then go way up to Campbell River, a hundred and sixty klicks, or a hundred miles north, for their sauna. The wild began up there. I knew a place with four hundred year old trees growing silent and tall by a long and narrow lake. I’d head up in a few days, maybe pan for gold, maybe write a poem, fish a little, and sit under those four hundred year old trees and sigh in the beauty.

Are you a painter? I asked Tess, thinking about her description of Manitoba.

Oh, not really. I play around a bit, but I’m no good you know.

Oh! You should never say you’re no good! I said.

Only if it’s true, Darren growled from his dark corner.

No! I cried. If there’s even a bit of talent, why it should be nourished, not discouraged. You have to cultivate what’s in your mind, you know. I knew I lectured, and stopped.

Darren grunted and I glanced his way. Half his craggy face was in darkness, half in the dim light. His bare-skinned skull gleamed with sweat that followed deep ridges running across the red skin of his dome. Tiny lights glittered there as the light of the world outside reflected in his drops and streams of liquid.

But it’s true, Tess said sadly. I can’t paint for beans.

You don’t know what you say, I said, horrified at her mental error. Why, the mind creates your reality, and when you tell your mind you’re bad at something, well, then you are! I wiped my eyes.

Not if it’s true, Darren chucked in.

But you’ll never know if you keep creating a negative reality! Why all you have to do is say you’re good and then find your own level, naturally. It’s better to encourage, acknowledge small steps, and only then focus on poor aspects, with the idea to improve.

Shouldn’t delude yourself, Darren said. Tess sighed. We fell silent.

Tess dropped down from her perch to sit by my side. My dad did some pretty bad things, she said quietly. I took a slug of water, then let my head sag in the heat, and waited. The whispering of the teens sounded like quiet air conditioning. He and Mom were in the army you know, Tess continued. Her fingers softly drummed the slick red wood. After they died I found all kinds of things about them from their army records.

What did they do?

Dad ran away from the Army.

Oh! I expected him to be a gunner, not a runner, or a logistics man, artillery maybe. We had artillery in Nanaimo. Running was bad in that world.

He deserted!

I felt Darren glaring at Tess. I looked and saw him shake his head.

They put him in the infantry and were sending him to war, Tess said.

World War I?

She looked at me like I was a complete dunce. No! World War II.

There’s so many, I get them mixed up.

Tess smiled and seemed to forgive my accidental shot implying she was really old. He hid out with his mother-in-law for a year, she said, But they got him. He spent another year doing hard labour. She looked like she wanted to cry from the weight and the heat. The sauna fell silent except for the squat rectangle of the heater ticking as it went through its cycle.

I thought for a moment or three. I wanted to pierce her impenetrable sadness. Hey, listen, I said. I poked her lightly with my elbow, Maybe this is what happened. She fixed her eyes on me. They were large and liquid and black in