The Cross-eyed Jackal of Sagamore Splits – Part XV
Feb 1st, 2010 | By Tom Sheehan | Category: Fables Fairy Tales and Folklore, Series | 332 viewsThe mother jackal living in the hills above Sagamore Splits, a summer camping area for people of the city-life, left her newborn to get food. She was gone for two or three hours and came back with a piece of cooked meat she had stolen from a campfire while a camper was shaving at the stream. When she returned to the cave where they lived, she noticed the little one’s eyes were crossed and he appeared to have difficulty knowing what he looked at.
“What happened?” she said to her little one. “Why are your eyes crossed like that, as if you cannot decide which way to look for things?”
“When you left here, you told me to watch both the front and the back of the cave, to keep alert for anyone preying on the newborn like me.”
“But you only had to swing your head back and forth to see in both directions, like this,” she said, and swung her head back and forth, her eyes peering at the brightness outside and the darkness toward the back of the cave that ran deeper into the heart of the mountain. “This way is so much easier.”
“But you can’t see both ways at the same time, like I can, just as you told me to do,” the young one protested, and further stated his case by adding, “I can see the yellow flowers waving in the breeze out in the forest in front of the cave, and at the same time I can see the snake with red diamonds on his skin that’s sitting back there on a shelf of rock looking as if he’s hungry enough to eat both of us.”
“But I can’t see any snake back there,” she said.
“That’s because you just came in from the brightness of day and the back of the cave is like midnight.”
The mother jackal, feeling that her young one was more adaptable to change than she was, did not pursue a change in tactics, being comfortable in her own way. And she completely disregarded the snake with the red diamonds on his skin, as if word from the young did not count.
On the following day, when she came back with another stolen meal, off a new camper’s fire, the snake was coiled in place where she had left her little one.
“Where is my son?” she said to the snake, unable to see deeper into the dark cave.
“Oh,” said the snake, “he is still here, but you cannot see him now.”
“Then he is in one piece?” she asked.
“Yes,” said the snake, for he had swallowed the young one whole.
Sometimes nothing is the way one sees it.
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About Tom Sheehan: Bio note: Tom Sheehan’s books are Epic Cures and Brief Cases, Short Spans, from Press 53; A Collection of Friends and From the Quickening, from Pocol Press. His work is currently in new anthologies from Press 53, Home of the Brave, Stories in Uniform and Milspeak: Warriors, Veterans, Family and Friends Writing the Military Experience. He has 14 Pushcart nominations, the Georges Simenon Award for fiction, a story in the Dzanc Best of the Web Anthology for 2009 and a nomination for Best of the Web 2010. His novels include Vigilantes East, Death for the Phantom Receiver and An Accountable Death. His poetry books include The Saugus Book; Ah, Devon Unbowed; and This Rare Earth & Other Flights. He served in Korea, 1951-52, with the 31st Infantry Regiment. He has many Internet and print magazine appearances, has appeared in 11 print issues of Ocean Magazine, has 134 cowboy stories on Rope and Wire Magazine, recorded works in Qarrtsiluni, work in Rosebud, Lady Jane Miscellany, Perigee and Writing Raw, etc. He helped co-edit and issue two books on his hometown of Saugus, MA, sold 3700 to date of 4500 printed ( 842 total pages in the two books) with color sections, text, timelines, nostalgia and history, all proceeds for Saugus High School graduates via the John Burns Memorial Scholarship. Tom’s web site is at http://www.milspeak.org/TomHome2.htm. |
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