An Earth Day Eulogy

By Nestor Walters

Jacob Wilder has nothing against Earth Day — he just has 'real responsibilities' and can't be bothered by it. But on Earth Day Eve, the ghost of Wilder's old platoon buddy, Eddie, announces that three spirits will visit — those of Earth's past, present, and future — and he warns that one of two things will have to die: Earth, or our old way of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nestor Walters
• Release date: Apr 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224581160

Book preview

An Earth Day Eulogy

being a ghost story of Earth Day

received by

Nestor Walters

Copyright © 2024 by Nestor Walters

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact nestor 'at' swordcirclepen.com

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Book Cover by Two Pollard Design

Cover Photo by NASA - Bill Anders in lunar orbit with Apollo 8, December 24th, 1968

Illustrations by Nestor Walters

1st edition 2024

Land Acknowledgement

The land on which my university was built and from where I write this is the ancestral land of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, and it continues to be of great importance to the Ohlone people

to my nephew,

and all those who must endure

the future that we leave behind

Sad storm whose tears are vain,

Bare woods, whose branches strain,

Deep caves and dreary main, –

Wail, for the world's wrong!

from A Dirge by Percy Blysshe Shelley

Preface

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To my fellow citizens of the great United States of America and of the irreplaceable World at large:

I place this ghastly little book into your trusted care. To the best of my ability, I did nothing to create it, but only to receive and pass on that which seems already to be True in the heart of every one of us. May it lift us in the song of Earth and the rhythm of Stars and bring us closer to the starlight and mud from which we all are born and by which we all are one.

Your faithful friend and servant,

S. N. W.

Contents

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Preface

Chapter 1 –– Eddie's Ghost

the Creature waved his hand and they were silent

Chapter 2 –– The First of The Three Spirits

the pouring of earth-heart into Wilder

Chapter 3 –– The Second Spirit

the raven, the dove, the vulture, the fire

Chapter 4 –– The Last of The Spirits

the rider advances toward Wilder

Chapter 5 –– The Beginning of it

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

—––––––—

Eddie's Ghost

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Eddie was the man: everyone agreed; but now he was dead. His parents had buried him, his platoon leader had memorialized him, and his platoon mates had all gotten together to yell Eddie was the man! at each other, slam shot glasses on bar tops, then storm outside looking for someone to fight with. They made a set of glass coins, each with Eddie's picture on one side –– in shorts, body armor, and a mouthful of chew –– and with the quote Eddie Did It on the other. Wilder himself had arranged for the coinmaking.

Now, I don't claim to know what it was that Eddie did. We all knew the type though. Drew Edgar Moslinger. Slinger. Slayer. The kind to spend all night knocking back hard liquor, run home with some friendly dame, then come into work the next morning –– the platoon that he and Wilder shared –– run five miles, throw around some weights, and sling tightly grouped lead onto targets postered with men holding RPGs and women in suicide vests. Always there to sweep the platoon space, help a buddy move some furniture, or buy the next round of beers.

Oh, he was a fine operator –– no one denied this. But it must be remembered that Eddie was dead, or nothing meaningful can come of the following story. If, for example, we were not absolutely certain of Obi-Wan's death, before his visiting Luke at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back, wearing only his hooded bathrobe in a raging Hoth blizzard, and telling Luke to go find Yoda to complete his training, then there would be nothing more compelling about dear Obi's appearance to Luke than there would be in any old neighbor holographically calling his young and handsome neighbor, at the worst time possible –– when he is hypothermic to the point of deathly hallucinations –– literally to tell that young neighbor how cool his old buddies were back in the day.

Eddie died seven years ago today, crossing the street in the path of a driver who, naturally, was recording a video selfie. The next day was Earth Day and Eddie, always eager to look ridiculous and show off his monstrous legs, wore a Christmas tree costume with green spandex leggings. A tree is a tree! he'd told people on his way to an Earth Day pub crawl where, in honor of the day, the plastic cups everyone was using and discarding were at least colored green. Wilder had not witnessed the accident –– he'd been riding passenger in a box truck with leftover ammunition from some desert warfare training. But he'd been appointed to collect the costume and belongings to later give to the parents, and remembered noting that the dried blood streaks blended remarkably with the tinsel.

Wilder never threw out Eddie's old things. There they stood –– the Stratocaster and its amplifier, the TV on its gear-crate stand, the couch that was in fact the scavenged seat of a government van –– in Wilder's shared living room, sometimes used, mostly gathering dust. He was a practical man, our Jacob Alexander Wilder. As emotional as a grenade pin. But he respected things around him in ways he did not realize he could not understand. These items, for instance: they had not been willed to Wilder or passed on to him. They'd simply been left in the platoon space and eventually had to go.

As for Wilder, it should be said that for the man he was, there was nothing particular about him. A few school fights, house moves, heartbreaks; some sports but not enough to stand out; some studying but not enough to shine. The military. But he was a veteran now. As a veteran, in the mornings he works out, trims his beard in the shower and puts his pants on after his underwear. He drives in the middle lane and sometimes melts an ice cube into his coffee if he's in a hurry. He cares about things, though, our Wilder. His job he wants to see prospering and benefitting from his contribution. His daughter –– because there has to be a little girl –– he adores and would do anything to see her happy and healthy.

He is a child of the universe, our Wilder. Human. Human! In his arteries pumps blood that was once water in a vast ocean, and in his complicated intelligence are still coiled the aggressive and territorial vestiges of reptilian evolution. If he can help someone, he will, is what he tells himself. But what he usually means –– although he has never consciously thought this –– is people like him: other veterans; other Americans; other light skinned, lightly bearded, modestly muscled, middle-aged men. Stars once exploded to make the atoms in Wilder's fingernails and eyelashes. But he is, like the rest of us, human, and cannot yet comprehend that the same stars died for the atoms lining the fingernails and eyelashes of every other person.

That Wilder sat then, on this particular afternoon, working at the table with his laptop in his shared living room, should come as a surprise to no one. Outside was spring. Trees shot bright with green rustled in a gentle breeze and flowers in neighbors' gardens burst with blue and yellow and white and pink petals, all bathed in a soft golden sunlight. Children laughed playing in a neighbor's blow-up pool and huddles of house-husbands and housewives talked animatedly as they passed carrying brown paper bags from a local grocer.

The next day was Earth Day, but Wilder had forgotten this. Does anyone remember when Earth Day is? Even your faithful writer, at the time of this writing, did not. All day Wilder had sat in meetings, scouting clients and arranging suppliers, and now he sat inside, with curtains drawn to reduce glare and earplugs to avoid distractions, wishing the people outside would shut up for just a few minutes, hoping to finish before his daughter, Luz, woke up from her teenager nap and he had to take her to her mother's. And he might have succeeded in this if a metallic clanging hadn't begun in the kitchen, and a wafting of noxious fumes aggressively accompanied it.

The source of this torment could be seen through the kitchen door: a small-ish man with limbs long and thin like a grasshopper's, and hair long and unkempt, in a thready hooded shirt, struggling with a frying pan the size of his own chest. This was Vinnie Zeng, Wilder's sublease, a situation that Wilder tolerated in order to live in a house with a yard and a wheelchair ramp not too far from where Luz's mother lived in the city, and to enroll his daughter in a better-funded school. Vinnie got the garage for his setup, Wilder the den for his daughter's bedroom, and they'd agreed that Vinnie's loud cooking could only be done during certain hours. But some days the fumes of rancid bean curds or simmering fermented vegetables became too much for Wilder, and he'd fry up a pan of bacon next to his roommate's concoction, simply as a protest. He had just gotten up to do this when he was interrupted by someone bursting in the door.

Happy Earth Day, Jake-y, cried a voice so cheerful and bright it was almost singing. This was Kiki, Wilder's older half-sister, a wispy thing that a breath might blow over, pale-ish, with freckled arms and fiery red hair, and teeth that protruded slightly but endearingly so, who pranced in holding her T-shirt folded into a pouch at her belly.

Keep it down, Wilder grumbled, gesturing to the half-open door of the den. Especially with that poser shit.

The sister pranced into the kitchen, her long skirt about levitating with her movements, and emptied her pouch contents onto the table: bright orange peppers, luscious red tomatoes, dark green avocados. Something smells good in here! she said to the roommate, who smiled ecstatically and began outlining with excruciating detail his process and ingredients.

When Kiki returned to the living room, Wilder was back at his computer. Earth Day is poser shit? she asked. What are you clowning around for?

I'm not clowning, Wilder said, half-closing his laptop. It just is. 'Help us plant a tree' they say –– 'feed a starving penguin.' How about you stop cutting down rainforests to make resorts I can never afford to go to?

Cattle farms, the sister said, and closed his laptop the rest of the way.

What?

Rainforests are cut down for cattle farms, and you eat as much meat as anybody.

What am I supposed to do? Wilder replied. Raise my little girl on alfalfa sprouts? Eat pineapple and fermented socks like him?

Uh, I can hear you, Vinnie piped in, his head poking out from the kitchen.

If I didn't want you to, I would have whispered, Wilder said, and the roommate disappeared with a giggle.

I have nothing against Earth Day, Wilder added to Kiki, nor Father's Day, Mother's Day, Women's Day, Pride, or any of those other makeshift appreciation holidays. What I do hate is posers: people who strut around, pretending to care about something, acting like we're on the brink of some disaster or breakthrough that only my five dollar donation can protect us from or enable, and meanwhile their executives are flying private jets to champagne fundraisers, wearing the latest fashions of fur and leather. As far as I'm concerned, he said, opening again his laptop, "anyone who wants to celebrate Earth Day can do so with a sprig of broccoli up their ass and a nice