Editors Note:
This issue introduces a new feature for North Platte Traveler Readers.
“Tell me a tale...” will feature short stories by local
amateur writers.
For more information on submitting your story, contact us today.
Office: 308-53204040
Email: editor@nptraveler.com
Our feature writer for the spring/summer 2004 issue is Ian
Mora
Mora is a lifelong resident of North Platte. He graduated
from North Platte High School in 1998. He served a mission in Tacoma,
Wash., for the Church of Latter Day Saints from 1999-2001.
Jonathan took a closer inspection
at the desk to see if it was out of order.
“Pencils, notes…
yes that’s right,” he whispered to himself.
Jonathan took a step back in his mind, looking at the scene from a different
angle.
“I’m dressed casually enough for work –
not too casual and not too formal. I’m on time. I’m completely
caught up on my form documents.”
Jonathan looked at the ceiling with a perplexed look on his face. He took
another step back. “Car is fine. Apartment rent OK. Fridge loaded.”
Jonathan paused…closed his eyes. Missing, missing, missing…
Then suddenly it hit.
“I remember,” said Jonathan
aloud.
The lightning came out of nowhere and the day seemed somehow cloudy. No,
not cloudy. It was as if the day was already cloudy and the sun came out
for a moment and now it was gone.
Jonathan noticed a small lump in his throat. It began to swell. He felt
tears behind his eyes, pulling at them in their sockets.
“Impossible,”
whispered Jonathan. “I don’t cry.”
But before he finished these words, he began to weep. Not just weep, but
sob.
His tears hit his keypad and Jonathan brushed the post-it notes off his
desk. He inhaled deeply and let it out, a small sound erupting from his
throat he had never heard before. He buried his head in his arms.
“How could I forget?” whispered Jonathan to the floor, his head
now resting upon his folded arms, covering his face from view.
“I can’t believe I lost,” Jonathan said to himself, “but
what did I lose?”
Jonathan tried to remember.
He continued to sob. Several people
stopped to see if he was OK and he motioned them away politely with his
hand. They walked away, fascinated and worried.
Jonathan lifted his head from his desk and looked around awkwardly. He dried
his eyes.
A moment passed.
Jonathan closed his eyes and remembered.
It was the summer of ’87. Jonathan was 14 and very fat. He had been
overweight all his life. It was the great thorn in Jonathan Jointer’s
life. He had always expected much out of himself.
The Devil wasn’t what he had expected.
He didn’t have a pointy tail or a long greased mustache or even an
English accent. He was, as a matter of fact, very tall.
Jonathan had met Lucifer on the banks of the Platte River while he was in
Eastern Colorado on a vacation with his family. They had been off building
a fire or something and up walked this gentleman. He had actually been wearing
a suit and this particular part about him was something Jonathan had imagined
he would wear.
“Hello Jonathan James Jointer” said
the Tall Man.
“How did you know my name?” Jonathan
asked.
“I know everything about you my boy. You were born
in Rocky Point Washington to Debra and Martin Jointer, your father tempting
your mother with the unsightly come on of ‘I noticed you across the
bar.’ This not uncommon for a sailor. Russian hands and Roman fingers.”
Jonathan blinked at this strange man. He was rather tall. Taller, in fact,
than any man Jonathan had ever seen. Perhaps his memory had made the exchange
more myth than fact right now, but Jonathan vaguely remembered this man’s
head grazing the lower branches of some tall elm trees. He must have been
81/2 feet, if an inch.
His suit was enormously long and a magnificent black. So black.
Jonathan was afraid. This isn’t a good word to describe exactly what
Jonathan felt at the time, but it was a feeling that you might get if you
were to wake up from a vividly bad dream about drowning to find yourself
standing in a puddle of water.
“Well young boy, it seems
you are very fat in the ass,” the Devil smiled thickly. His face contained
a relish of joy, as if he were complimenting as opposed to degrading.
“How would you like me to fix that for you?”
Jonathan just stared.
“Cat got your tongue?” asked
the devil with the same smile.
Once again Jonathan was amazed at the size of this man. He towered over
the nearby bushes as if they were a cluster of soccer balls gathered up
for a gym class. They came up to Jonathan’s neck.
“Who
are you?” asked Jonathan, his voice shaking.
“Ah, the
great question. The question that is always one of the first given and the
first forgotten. I am Jack Sprat. I am the Leaping Lizard. I am Yours Truly.
The Master of all evil and darkness. Blah, blah, blah.”
At this the tall man rolled his eyes in an exaggerated way.
“Are
you Satan?” asked Jonathan.
Now he noticed he was on the verge of tears, yet all the play yard days
of being abused verbally had taught Jonathan not to cry.
“I
am a friend, let’s keep it at that. I watched you on the drive. I
saw you looking out your car window. I was in the sky watching you. Two
weeks ago I saw you when you stared at the woman. You got very excited watching
her dress waggle back and forth didn’t you? “I was there.
I was behind the cereal boxes. You are a very curious young man Jonathan
and I like you very much. That is why I am here. You are so full of Passion.”
Jonathan stared at the gaunt face above him with terror. He backed up two
steps.
“This can’t be real,” thought Jonathan.
“This man is in my head, it’s just a bad dream and in a moment
I’ll wake up in the tent with my parents. It’s not real.”
Despite these reassurances, the man did not disappear. He instead came two
bounding steps closer and now stood directly in front of Jonathan.
“Here’s the deal,” said Satan. “You are fat and
disgusting. And you know Jill? The girl you like? She is sick when she looks
at you. She told her friends she is grossed out that a guy like you could
ever like her.”
When Satan said “grossed out,” his face perfectly mimicked what
looked like a young girl. Jonathan could not explain this later to his parents.
He hadn’t said much to them at all as a matter of fact.
“She
says that if you were more like Jim, you would be more for her.”
Satan’s face became calm and solemn. It was as if he were an angel
now instead of a monster. He was even almost soothing to look at.
“You are a good man Jonathan, that’s why you must make a deal
with me. I don’t want your ‘soul’ Jonathan, or anything
of that sort. What I want from you is much cheaper. It’s something
that if you give it to me, I’ll give you beauty and joy and happiness
forever. I want something very small. It’s so small Jonathan, you
can’t imagine. You won’t even know it’s gone.
“I want your passion. Simple and so fast, it will be over before you
even know it. And for that I will give you beauty you cannot imagine.”
“I believe in God,” declared Jonathan bravely
This seemed to take the Devil aback.
“As do I,” said
the Tall Man in the black suit. “But what has He done for you lately?
You are laughed at and are the butt of many jokes Jonathan. And you don’t
think I haven’t seen your tears? I have always watched and been there
for you. Remember that day you fought Jake for spitting on your back? Who
gave you that anger?”
“I was suspended for that.”
“But how did it feel to hit him?
I promise you, he won’t forget. You bruised his ego that day Jonathan,
and he deserved it!”
Jonathan stood silent.
“I’m not asking you for much
my young friend. Just your passion. Trust me, when you are handsome you
won’t need it. The world will come to you, Jonathan, and lay at your
feet. Think of all the girls and all the popularity and money that will
flow towards you. You will be a god, Jonathan. I will make you so handsome
you will not regret it, I promise.”
Jonathan put his head down.
“What is passion?” asked
Jonathan. In the distance a strange bird chirped.
“Passion
is like a fire, Jonathan, and it drives a person. I just want to take that
fire and quench it. I want to put it the hell out and leave you a cinder
in the sky. You will be beautiful Jonathan. This does not mean you cannot
love, it does not mean you cannot hope.
“I promise, you
will not care tomorrow morning. Passion lasts a long time and you will not
care for more then a day at most, I promise, because you will be as quick
and beautiful as a rainbow and just as quick and beautiful to leave. You
will be completely unique in the entire world Jonathan, and the most attractive
to look at over anyone.”
The devil’s face turned serene and a tear rolled down his cheek. It
hit the ground and the grass wilted beneath its touch in an instant. Jonathan
didn’t notice this, he just stared at Satan.
“I love
you Jonathan.”
Jonathan began to cry.
“I don’t have any friends,”
said Jonathan.
A hand lay softly on his shoulder. It was comforting.
Jonathan’s mind filled with a thousand thoughts. Truly his life was
too hard to bear as himself. He was always under the shadows. His whole
life, Jonathan had been too fat, too slow, too ugly, too unsure for anything.
“I’m here for you,” said the Tall Man.
Jonathan looked around.
“Okay, make me beautiful.”
Jonathan said in a whisper.
The first morning there was no change and Jonathan was mildly disappointed.
He was also somewhat relieved.
Jonathan stood in front of the mirror, his dark hair in a crew cut and his
layers of fat flowing over his large waist. He was still as pale as ever.
“Nothing” Jonathan had said.
Jonathan felt foolish, but every morning that week he looked for changes
in the mirror. After two weeks of nothing, Jonathan stood in front of the
large bathroom mirror and noticed something.
It wasn’t an astronomical change by any means, but there was a streak
of blue mixed with the brown in his left eye. It looked to him like a river
cutting through a rock canyon.
It all happened quite fast after that.
One Thursday morning Jonathan swore he looked much thinner, as if he had
lost 15 pounds. This would not put a dent in his massive size and he hadn’t
used scales since he was very young since they simply wouldn’t accommodate
him. But he looked different somehow. Smaller.
One morning his nose had changed. Yes, it was not as pointed at the end,
he was sure of it. Another morning several weeks later, Jonathan’s
hair seemed a shade or three lighter.
The changes seemed to increase.
Each day now Jonathan noticed he looked thinner, and during this time where
there should have been fear, there was only joy.
It was now summer and a month had passed since the morning he had met the
Tall Man. By this time Jonathan’s eyes were blue. When he had brought
it to his mother’s attention, she had been as confused as him.
“Changes happen when we get older,” she had said.
But not like this.
After two months, Jonathan ventured on a scale and went from a whopping
400 plus pounds to a neat weight of 310.
He never spoke again to his mother of the changes because he new the reason.
Knew. It did not scare him, for some odd reason.
It took one week for Jonathan’s teeth to become straight. Another
week, Jonathan grew two inches. He had laughed for maybe half an hour in
the bathroom stall. His parents thought he was crazy.
By the end of summer, Jonathan had lost approximately 245 pounds, leaving
him at a healthy 190 pounds on the dot. He had also grown a total of six
inches that summer. Blonde hair and blue eyes now replaced what had been
dark before and muscles replaced the layers of fat that had once threatened
to smother him.
Despite the pre-implications, this was the happiest summer of Jonathan’s
life.
They didn’t recognize him when he entered school again. He was the
tallest, most handsome boy in the school. Things were not as bad after that.
Jonathan still preferred being alone. He would walk the same sidewalks he
had always walked and looked at the people pass him. They were still beautiful
and this was strange. He had anticipated them to be somehow different, yet
to him they were still beautiful.
Some nights Jonathan could not sleep. He tossed and turned in his bed. He
wondered what passion was and how it could affect a person. Then, Jonathan
fell fast asleep.
Some nights were hard, but the tears never seemed to last. In the morning
everything seemed okay.
“Everything has a cost,” Jonathan
said to himself at his computer desk, pushing away the recent cloud of memories.
“This is a moment I can’t forget,” Jonathan said
aloud. It had been the first time he’d cried or thought of this in
many years.
“My life is mediocre,” said Jonathan.
Jonathan stood up and walked slowly to the windows. He stared at the sky.
He could not imagine ever seeing anything as beautiful before as this day.
It was as if he had been in prison for many years, a stone prison, and had
not seen the sky his whole life until this moment.
So beautiful,” he said.
Jonathan ran out the doors of his office.
It didn’t take him long to realize that he wouldn’t be finding
the Tall Man today. Satan had made his deal and it was finished.
Jonathan tried screaming out the names he had been given so long ago, but
he hadn’t appeared and hadn’t decided to speak to him in any
eloquent way.
A gift had been given. The gift was this moment of memory. Jonathan looked
back on his life from the time he had made the deal and realized he truly
had lost his passion. Jonathan remembered his interactions with people all
through the years. He never seemed to care about anything. The girls who
had cared for him, which there had been many, he did not pursue. He simply
did not care, thus he was still single.
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