Episode Two: The Goose Invents Day Drinking

Welcome to the second part of my story. There are links to the audio presentation below,
and the text follows that.

Episode Two: the Goose Invents Day Drinking

    The Witch lived in a cluttered apartment in a brownstone near Rittenhouse Square.

It was a little bit moved in, a little bit lived in. A gaylord box did double duty as a table. It was  disguised by a lamp and an antimacassar which had been stolen from the arm of one of the two couches that were partially visible.

    The stolen antimacassar was from the far end of a green sofa against one windowless wall. The green couch had one vacant seat, with a deep greasy groove. Next to this space was an enormous sewing box with countless drawers and compartments full of all sorts of things.

The rest was heaped with laundry. Plastic baskets peeped through the multicolored clothing.

    The Goose had taken up residence on the other couch, which was vicious shades of
brown and orange found only on furniture from the nineteen  seventies.

    Dust stuck to acorn oil haze on anything that wasn’t moved often enough.

   The Witch kept the thermostat high and the windows open a crack.

    Hanging plants died in dusty windows. The colorless carpet was stained and had sticky
places, with pools of “especially so”.

    Through a passthrough window over a cluttered counter, the Goose could see into the Witch’s kitchen.

A ceramic tile counter and double sink, covered with stacks of antique and antiquated pots and food preparation devices, most covered with a haze of dusty corn oil.

   During the long days, the Goose would take up a perch by a filthy window, looking
beyond the sawtooth rooftops at the lonely, distant sky.

   After a few weeks, he still hadn’t learned to brew tea, in spite of the Witch’s efforts.

   The Witch came and went on ordinary and magical errands.

    She was a witch under contract. A local business had hired her to enchant a shipment
of nails, so that they would hold fast with one blow of the hammer,every time, yet let go of the wall entirely when the correct word was spoken.

   This kept her away most days.

She pulled a rubber wheeled, light grey metal cart through the red brick warehouse by the river. She set up her tools at each stack of wooden kegs of iron nails, spoke her piece and moved along the rows of pallets in a slowly drifting corona of incense smoke.

   Some evenings the two would set out, making a circuit of a few small tap rooms. They drank draft beer and smoked cigarettes until late.

   She underdressed him for the cold. Boozy conversation would flow by and the Witch would add a nasty
comment here or a clever observation there. The Goose would laugh too loud.

   Ravens did raven things, some as silhouettes, some as shadows.

   In Pennypack Park, moss dried out, nuts fell and leaves became new substance
for the forest floor.

  Grey Squirrel had a difficult time compared to other squirrels, these days.

     Always a strong competitor in spite of himself, now he was slowed down, handicapped
as if by an injury. He was preoccupied, carrying his treasure from place to place.

    There were days when he could stash it like a nut and forget about it. He preferred to
have it close, like his teeth and claws.

    Since the Circle of Ravens, and the Witch’s intervention, Grey Squirrel had new fears.
They were slower than the usual Squirrel fear. Heavy beat of black feathered wings and rasping, croaking voices built new fears in his head.

    The gold and white metal of the Witch’s broken scissors held potential, promise and
security. His tiny hand wanted to feel the metal become warm, to learn
to trust the paw sized, gold plated human hand that stuck out a couple of inches in front of the hoop of the handle.

    Concentration made him stop and think when another squirrel would have jumped.
Jumps became longer, parts of flowing chains of motion that ended with the Witch’s
broken scissors sticking out of a protrusion of the tree bark. Within the twitching of the increasingly brittle leaves, the rhythm of the branches and everything else moved. The bright point of the scissors became a fixed place around which all things shifted.

   Fear of the ravens kept the cold gold, unyielding hoop in his unaccustomed animal grip.
He didn’t know it, but he had discovered something that few animals that lived in the wild did. The difference between instinct and training. The practice and development of technique with a tool, an extension of oneself. The feeling of extending into an instrument. The feeling of increasing the effect of one’s will.

    Grey Squirrel imagined his confrontation with the ravens again and again, relishing the decisive, vindictive thrust at the end of every instance that didn’t end with a tattered, bloody squirrel.

   The Goose sat at the bar at McGlinchey's, gloomy over a glass of beer. His broad
shoulders took up two places at the bar, as he was repeatedly reminded when it was
 crowded in the evenings.

    He flinched and twitched, reseating himself on the unsteady, uncomfortable nest
provided by the barstool.

   The cavernous depths of the daytime bar were bare of the crowded coziness of night.
Worn plastic surfaces wrote their story in chipped corners and cigarette burns. Light filtered in through the unworldly colors of the leaded glass windows onto thirteenth street.

   The Bartender recognised him, which the Goose took as part of the advantage that his enchanted good looks gave him, as the Witch told him many times, over real men.

    She brought him another draft beer. The Goose sipped the cold drink, dreading the walk
home in his threadbare canadian tuxedo.