CHARLES DODD WHITE’S ORIGINAL:
THE SWEET SORROWFUL
Stoned, still good and stoned, Pendergast lost himself in the highest peak of things— celestial alignments and divinations, the verities of a fate beyond his ken. The stuff, in short, of Real Bitchslapping Truth. It came to him as he stared out at the languid trout fins, gently wavering beneath the surface of the trout farm. The idea, the dull and heavy haft of what was to come, cast its dumb nets somewhere out there among the fishes, and in that moment he knew the future involved his Nissan pick-up, a water hose and a blue Kmart tarp, slightly but manageably torn.
The farm was grainy with the speckled life swimming inside. Hectic razorwire scrawled above the ten foot high chain-link fence, enclosing the watery world from the access road where Pendergast now sat in the cab of his truck considering, smoking dope and considering, while the digital dashboard clock showed a peaked 4:32 AM.
He pulled the keys from the ignition and pocketed them as he eased the door open, the smoke slithering along as he stepped into the night. Still cool out, the stars sparked like bright chips in the High Above. Wintergreen, he whispered to himself, not knowing what he meant by saying that, the word coming unbidden as a hiccup. Pendergast studied the cosmos and thought about himself and the cold galaxy twirling in the fabric of universal fate overhead. Thus consoled, he walked around to the back, dropped the tail gate and spread the tarp, cinching the crinkling plastic taut to the truck bed until it lined the surface, then closed the gate again. Once he was satisfied it would hold water for the duration of the trip, he slung the hose and boltcutters on his shoulder and went about the business of committing his crime of love for the children.
The sick children. The poor, poor sick kids. Lord, they could get to Pendergast. Stab down into his conscience with their hollow eyes and rickety postures. Come tumbling in on his peace of mind in a stumbling stream of bodies—babbling, spring jointed bodies—like broken dolls poured out of a yard sale junk box.
He’d driven past the place for terminal children three times a week for nigh on a decade. Slowed down and held his breath, tires hissing as he gazed over the grass lawn so green it looked like it was lit by bulbs, a pretty pasture between good fortune and bad, him and them. He could never pass by that place with the brick building set so blandly back amid the empty landscaping without wanting to give some pain to himself, something to equal things out. He even liked to imagine knives driven hilt deep into his thighs and stomach, but in the end all he ever felt once he’d driven on was an increase in lack.
The simple brick building held a small army of dying youth inside. Cancer, leukemia, hemophilia. Blood and bone going to early rot inside that plain building set far back on a green, green lawn. A single manmade mossy pond had been scooped up out of the perfect green, carved into the shape of a teardrop or cartoon speech bubble. That pond was supposed to give the sick kids something to dream about when they looked out their windows because something about standing water was supposed to coax them from the wreck of death and set their minds towards a mystic beauty which, like all mystic things, was just a peaceable lie. It rankled the shit out of Pendergast.
Each Wednesday morning the attendants jerked the sick kids out of their small Walt Disney wallpaper rooms where they sat quietly dying. For some reason, it was supposed to improve their hopeless health by going fishing. The pond, however, was as empty as the air. Pendergast suspected the sick kids figured this out at some point, but they had accepted the stupidity of their caretakers and continued to cast their lines over the brown water with grim good humor. Of course, the corks never bobbed. The nets never bowed. But that was going to change, by damn God.
He jawed the bolt cutters in a quick, fierce line, snapping the links in the fence, and he passed through to the concrete apron. The nozzle was a bit farther than he’d hoped, but he had plenty of hose and it didn’t appear he would need to move the truck any closer. Once he’d coupled the nozzle snugly, he spun the valve and the hose tightened with a live gush. In a few seconds water began to plop out the other end onto the cement. He ran it back to the truck to let the tarp fill.
His legs were moving faster than he would have liked now. The ideas outpaced by reflex, and the word, the strange shape of vague sound suddenly rose in the chamber of his throat. Wintergreen. Still no tickle of memory in the saying. No, there was something more than that. A dark room and children laughing, and he among them. What in the name of hell?
The tarp slipped only a few silver threads of water from the edges. He stirred his arm in the filled truck bed as he brought back each bucket of trout, their slick fish bodies bumping against his forearm and fist as he stirred and stirred, bubbles rising to his shoulder like they meant to swallow him. His skin grew numb from cold.
Once the waters were choked with fish and the water slopping at the brim, Pendergast made haste. He cranked the truck, hit the one-hitter, and got gone. Too quick, in fact, the water surging out the back, carrying a good dozen or more trout onto the asphalt. He saw their wild writhing in the rear view mirror, but there was no time for rescue. Too much lay ahead and these poor few would have to be casualties for the cause.
As he followed the road, the sharp edges of predawn darkness began to creep in on Pendergast. His eyes felt rimmed with thin glass, the world coming in a harsh rush as the road blurred. He must have smoked too much dope and now it had begun to bite. The demands of driving a straight line had done evil to him. His blood beat up through his throat, and the name Wintergreen came again, but this time there was something more than skipping syllables. He was a child among the children. The room unlit and murmurs and giggles. They wanted him to do the trick. The trick with sparks in his mouth when he bit into the candy. Many didn’t believe it was true. He could feel their eyes on him in the dark. Wintergreen, Sue Topperson chanted. Wintergreen. And he bit and they clapped when he could feel the tiny fluttering flash in his mouth. Then they believed him and Sue kissed him moistly but pulled away before the lights came back on.
He swerved across the green lawn, the grass truly lit with bulbs from the great floodlight above the Charity Hope Hospice sign that fronted the pond. The soft earth began to give and melt under the spinning tires. Pendergast swore and gunned it, mud slinging from the back like arterial spray. At that moment, when all seemed lost, the tires gained purchase and the truck shot forward, pitching towards the face of the moony waters. Too much. Too much by God!
The surface impact struck him hard, his head smashing the top edge of the steering wheel.
He must have blacked out a moment because when he came to utter falling wet darkness he couldn’t believe how deep the pond was. How quickly the water poured in. And then there was the odd creaking sounds inside his chest that were sweet sorrowful measures of music that he couldn’t begin to understand.
But that mattered only for a second because he saw a shadow of something swimming just past his windshield. He had given them fish. As many as they could ever catch.
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THE REMIX:
WHAT IS TO COME
Celestial alignments and divinations, the verities of fate beyond our ken, a small army of what is to come: alligators gently wavering beneath the surface, stumbling stream of bodies inside a mossy pond, babbling, leather covered bodies like sofa cushions, pretty pasture between the good fortune and the bad, the dull and heavy heft of blood and bone going to rot early, dumb nets somewhere among the sharp green edges of pre-civilized darkness, and he was a child among the alligators, his blood beat up through his throat, their eyes in the dark, tinny, fluttering flash of his mouth, his head smashed the falling wet darkness and mudslinging arterial spray kissed him moistly, how deep the pond was as the water poured in, the strange shape of vague sounds caught in the chamber in his throat, and he among them, his skin numb from the cold, their ancient bodies bumping against his forearm and fist as he stirred and stirred, rising to his shoulder like they meant to swallow him, but that mattered only for a second and then he was only a shadow of something—
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Remixer’s process: Sometimes the first read through a short story sparks the inspiration needed to destroy it into something new, and after my first read through of “The Sweet Sorrowful” I knew this was one of those short stories that was crying out to be remade into a surreal-alligator based-flash fiction. One of the reasons I was so eager to work with Charles’ writing was out of admiration for his prose and so I built my process around selecting and reshaping my favorite phrases from “The Sweet Sorrowful”. I mostly worked with the tools he gave me, adding in only a few alligators and alligator associated phrases like “leather” and “ancient”.