Rooster, The Man -A Story Challenge Story and Shim Shoy Folktale-

There’s a song the children of the town sometimes sing as they play about;

Rooster didn’t have a tongue

The Good Lord didn’t give him one

Or someone cut his tongue away

It’s just impossible to say

Rooster was born in an asylum, where his little tongue was taken out by a crazy person.  Still, he turned out okay.  He was big and strong and smart and skillful, though his whole life there were people who considered him a grunting misborn idiot, and a certain percentage of these always treated him with a cruelty.  Still he learned patience and the fine art of listening and learning, and so he turned out okay.

At the orphanage, no one adopted Rooster, nor would they, this big strong boy gesticulating strangely with his hands and grunting.  So the Friar  educated Rooster himself, in scholarly fashion and criminal.  Something of an artist of open minded living, the Friar  fashioned an ingenious little lockbox that fit snugly in Rooster’s vacant jaw and started a smuggling venture and secret message service, all very ingenious and clandestine.  Thus did young Rooster range daily all about the town, subtly delivering secret things, often stopping to lend his strength to tasks and people in need of it along the way.  In this way Rooster gained a small reputation of strength and goodnaturedness.

A kindly Farmer would send for Rooster occasionally, sometime for weeks at a time during the harvest.  When the Farmer wanted to build, Rooster showed a talent for carpentry, and his education provided him with the knowledge of architecture, and he designed and built for the Farmer a barn, grain silo, and windmill.  These structures were impressive, and people came to know about them and Rooster’s skills.

The Farmer had a sweet natured daughter, and Rooster loved her more than anyone or anything else in the world, and passionately, too.  He knew he could never have her if he remained silent, so he wrote her a love letter of exquisite beauty that woke her to the true depths of his heartmind, and she found herself deeper in love than she could say. Rooster wrote another letter of stunning elegance, this one to the farmer, asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage, to which the stunned Farmer and his Wife agreed, for they were folk who prized nature of character over the circumstances of the material world.

Riches would come to Rooster, however, and thusly to the Farmer and his Wife and the Friar, too.

There was a man who had always kept a curious eye on Rooster, since the first time the silent little boy delivered a secret message to him from the ingenious little box in his hollow mouth, and he would always send for Rooster when he needed someone he could trust to make a delivery.  To this man, it was not Rooster’s naturally enforced silence that made him trustworthy, it was just something he knew to be so.  This man was a criminal, and by the time of Rooster’s wedding had become the biggest Boss in town. 

He paid Rooster a huge sum to design and build for him a great mansion, riddled with concealed passageways, secret doors, and hidden vaults to store his fortune in ill-gotten gains.  Here was another who could see Rooster’s value where others did not. Rooster designed and built many such houses for the Boss’s asscociates, and was well paid by them, as well.  Rooster bought the farm neighboring his In-Laws, and built a new little house for his blushing bride, and life was just as wonderful as it can be. 

Some time went on by, and the Boss died.  His son took over.  The Boss’s Son was cruel and always had been.  As a boy there was no greater tormentor of poor misunderstood Rooster as this vile little thug.  As a man he was no better, and life in the town became a grim and nervous affair for many.  He had learned  some things from his father however.  One of these things was the secret value of Rooster.

The New Boss went to the little house and told Rooster he needed him to show him all the secret ways of the house he had built for his father, as they two were the only ones who knew them all.  The New Boss was rude about it, reminiscing on the torments he would inflict on Rooster when they were boys.  He did not bring them up to apologize, he only laughed at them again. 

Rooster went with him and and showed him the secret vaults and and entrances and escape doors.  By the time they were done, Sonny Boy was five times wealthier than he had dreamed, and drunk with a great greed temporarily fulfilled, he shoved a box flowing over with gold coins into Rooster’s arms and sent him away, but Rooster left the gold in the vault when he left.

The New Boss came by again a little later, with the box of gold coins, angrily insulted that Rooster had not accepted it.  Rooster still did not want it, however.  The New Boss tried to elicit some greed from Roster’s wife, but, being a fulfilled person, she was unreachable in this fashion.  Sonny Boy had not seen this quality in a woman in his whole life, because his was a world of crime and criminals and greed.  He didn’t believe it, and it made him even angrier.

He demanded that Rooster show him the secret entrances of his late Father’s associates, which only Rooster knew.  Rooster refused, and enraged, the New Boss pulled a knife and swiped menacingly at Rooster’s Wife.

In his love letters to her and in his heartmind, Rooster refers to his Wife’s cheeks as his own apples of immortality, a god’s delight.  As his eyes beheld the short, thin red line emerge glistening  from his Wife’s cheek, his golden apple’s perfect flesh wounded, a stout locked door deep deep and deep within Rooster fell open without a sound, and an all consuming storm burst forth, filling Rooster.

He grabbed the  New Boss by the arms, pinning them to his sides, and squeezed mightily.  Sonny Boy tried to scream over the sound of his cracking ribs, but his inner mechanisms for such activity were already crushed.  When the knife fell from his hand, Rooster crunch-folded him over one knee and hurled him through the front door, which was closed, smashing it into pieces.  Sonny Boy’s bodyguards, his most vicious thugs,  were waiting outside for him.  They tried to avenge him, but Rooster smashed their heads in with a splintered plank of wood from the shattered door.  He loaded their bodies into their ride, and, setting the the whole thing on blazing fire, sent it down the road to town.

Rooster went back inside and tended to his beloved Wife.  Strong as an iron ox, she had never known his touch to be anything other than gentle and loving, and this moment, in the aftermath of bloody carnage, is no exception. 

Many people in the town were grateful to Rooster for ridding them of such a vile group of gangsters, even though they knew he did not do it for them, and Rooster became something of a living legend. That’s why the children in the town sometimes sing a song when playing about, that always begins

Rooster didn’t have a tongue

The Good Lord didn’t give him one

Or someone cut his tongue away

It’s just impossible to say

 

Thank You

Stanley Squantro Part 1, The Boy Who Could Talk To Walls

Stanley Squantro, like many humans in the modern world, spent a lot of time in rooms.  Rooms, of course, are made primarily of walls, which is to say a room can lack a proper floor or ceiling, but there is no such thing as a room without walls, as that would simply be outside.  Commonly referred as the “Out of Doors”,  roomless environments would more accurately be labeled the “Out of Walls”.  As a matter of fact and coincidence, this is exactly how Stanley Squantro referred to being outside.

“Where are you going, Stanley?”

“For a stroll out of walls.”

You get the idea.  It’s simply that the reality and importance of walls was very clear in Stanley Squantro’s unusual mind, and it sometimes influenced him in the way of little eccentricities like that.  To Stanley, “Out of Doors” was a problem experienced by housebuilding crews.

For your consideration, nobody can tell you how or why, but when Stanley Squantro talked to walls, the walls talked back.

By way of an explanation, he offers this;

“I can see the faces of walls.  Not always right away, sometimes it takes me a while, or maybe it’s a shy wall and doesn’t want to show me it’s face right away, but sooner or later I see it, and it sees me, and when that happens I can talk to it, and it talks back to me.”

Of all the people that ever shared space in a room with Stanley while he conversed with the walls,  no one could ever hear the walls talking to Stanley except Stanley, and what’s more, no one ever heard him talking to them, either.  To their senses, it appeared that Stanley simply stared silently at a wall or walls for a while, not exactly in a trance, just quiet, then he would “snap out of it” and report his findings, if appropriate.  Not that the walls care if their secrets get spread around.  Accordingly to Stanely, walls are dispassionate entities for whom such concepts as “secrets” are simply nonexistent.

“After all it’s people’s reputations that are at stake, not the wall’s.”  Stanley has often said in rebuke to the gossip hounds, or the overly curious, to be polite about it.  You can hardly blame such types for bothering Stanley Squantro, who has peeled back the concealing paint from the walls of so many historical mysteries.  But that’s for later.

What is Stanley Squantro? Is he a detective? A historian? A hero?  A villain?  All these and more, naturally.  To sum up, let’s call him a finder, outside, of course, from being a wall talker, which is obvious.

Throughout his childhood, he was Stanley on the spot for any and all lost items in the household.  Mom’s keys, Brother Stevie’s snakes, hamsters, mice, and various other small wild caught creatures (often found, unfortunately, in the same place, if you catch my meaning), Sister’s shoes and socks, Dad’s various secret stashes, always having to be moved to avoid detection and inevitably  forgotten.  Here’s how Dad approached it; Mom would be taking the kids along on a shopping trip or some such activity and Dad would request that Stanley stay behind to help him with  some project or other and when they were gone he would say real nonchalant like to Stanley,

-Say Stan, do your old man a favor and ask the walls where Dad put his stash last time, okay?

-Say no more.  Stanley would reply.  Returning with his quarry, for example a cigarette case tucked behind the bookcase, Dad would take it with one hand and pat Stanley on the head with the other, give him some cash and remind him that this particular finding was to be between the two of them only.  This kind of practice instilled in  young stanley the importance of discretion as well as it’s value.

You may be wondering at the nonchalance of this Dad person in regards to Stanley’s strange ability.  the fact is, Stanley never made a secret of his wall talking.  Whenever someone asked him how he was so good at finding things, he would just say the walls told him where they are. The Squantros were a witty and playful family, so to all of them but Stanley himself, his “talking to walls” was simply an adopted code the family used in reference to his bizarre success rate in the finding of lost things. You get me?

To be continued!

Shim’n and Shoy’n

Loyin sproin

read my moin

goolagoggin over slew

take a hungry swimmin stew

innefective life jacket made of a giant oyster cracker with armin legholes

but Auntie Boody slaved over hot stoves to make it for you

and now it’s reduced to a fine fine goo

fit only for filling in the cracks around the gingerbread rocket to the

to the

to the

outer pastry zones

where the Red Velvet layers in the Green Velvet layers in the Spice Velvet

and your tastebuds transfigure into thousands of tiny eyes and you have to

stick your tongue way out to get a good look around

Shim Shoy

What’s up with this BLOG?

Here’s what’s up with this BLOG.  Pat Coughlin (me) is a guy that likes to come up with a lot of imaginary people in imaginary places, generally having adventures or living lives of otherwise abnormal dramatismoy.  Over the years since it all really got goin’, a full on storybook realized itself in the physical world, known, as it’s main focus and our good friend are known, as Squire Errant.

Squire Errant is the story of a man known as the Silver Knight, a greatly celebrated hero in a world that has forgotten such a person might exist.  Although he is a supreme fighter, and invincible in his silver armor, he is secretly a shameful coward.  He shares this secret only with his hypnotist, who is also his young squire and emotional punching bag.  One fine day the Squire decides he’s had enough of that shit and they go their seperate ways.  Then…

If you would like to read some of Squire Errant, please subscribe and say so in the comment box! 

Squire Errant established The MacroCosmic Monomyth, a supercolony story tree organism growing into our world, featuring many imaginary people with fascinating, unusual, exciting, dangerous lives.  Perhaps one of the most facinating, unusual, exciting and dangerous of these is the life of Vehn Rous, called The Mouse.  Half noble fighting man and half wandering Tinker, the circuitous path of Vehn Rous’  life experience courses through every aspect of the MacroCosmic MonoMyth and touches on countless of the storylives that incubate and grow within it, including, of course, the Silver Knight and Squire errant, as can be experienced in The Days and Nights of Nellymas. 

If you would like to read about Vehn Rous, please subscribe and say so in the comment box!

SHIM SHOY!  Funner than regular poetry!  Shim Shoy poems and folktales will appear on Pat Coughlin’s Blog regardless of your refusal to subscribe, so why not just subscribe and get some soul-delicious random Shim Shoy sent your way every once in a while?

Somewhere between The MacroCosmic MonoMyth and Shim Shoy we find some stories called The Mannersword and Hidden Cities.   The Mannersword, featuring long walking Boose Walksler, who is a girl or a boy depending on who’s reading it,  can be checked out at the blog of the same name, right next door to this one. 

Hidden Cities features the stories of Greene Vardim Black, he of the empty head, a blank slate sort of young fellow who comes to live with his Magician Uncle in the Hidden City of Chicago, as well as those intriguingly unusual individuals that become his friends and enemies and lovers.   

I’ll be posting some Greene Vardim Black for sure, but if you want it quicker, please subscribe and comment thusly!  Your wish is my command! 

Keep in mind the utter awesomeness featured at Pat Coughlin’s Blog, and please enjoy the rest of your day!

Thank You and Shim Shoy!