"An idea is the most dangerous parasite in the world. It spreads through the mind like cancer consuming its host. An idea is resilient and once it takes hold, it feeds. Think of what truly powerful ideas have done: changed lives, altered histories, shaped the world.”

- Captain Christopher Monroe

* * * * *

Insanity, it is said, is the repetition of the same process expecting a different result. As I unsaddle Ulysses, I cannot resist re-defining the term for I feel madder on the nights I fail to repeat what has become an addictive routine. As the weeks persist in their forward march, so too do my midnight rides to the Bohemian’s Tavern. It becomes difficult to admit that I feel more normal discussing fiction with academics or reading poetry with piss-poor students than passing my time in the so-called comforts of home.

Do I have the courage to fuel my heart’s flame? Or will I recognize the chink in my sanity if I continue playing the role of the politician’s daughter? These are the questions I ponder when I slip into the manor house by the back door and notice that I’m being watched. Even by the dim lighting, I can see Father’s beak-shaped nose cast upward, his condescending expression reaching me from down its crooked curve.

“Is this my punishment?”

Of the legion of questions with which I expect to be cross-examined, this one catches me off-guard. Yet, it shouldn’t have surprised me because it places the Almighty Mr. Darling center stage in someone else’s drama. I don’t know how to tell him the script of my life’s production has no part for him.

“You give yourself too much credit,” I answer. “Not everything I do pertains to you.”

“Does it not?”

I have seen Father upset before, but the tension in his clenched jaw suggests he is seething. When he rises from the upholstered chair and takes a step toward me, it sends a shudder down the small of my back.

“When you eat, it is only because I feed you. When you put on your pants to go riding God knows where at this unseemly hour, it is because I clothe you. When you recline in the library and poison your mind with liberal ideas about self-expression, it is only because I give you the roof under which you do so. Everything you do pertains to me because I am your father and…”

“Father, I never asked…”

My attempted interruption ceases with the generous force of Father’s hand. The initial impact stings my cheek, but it grows into an incessant burning as the shape of his palm brands my face. I touch the edge of my lip and pull back a crimson-tipped finger.

“Your wanton disrespect will no longer be tolerated. You were taught better, but despite my pleas, you continue to embarrass your family with your thoughtless actions.”

“What are you talking about?”

The desperation in my eyes betrays my ignorance.

“You insult my intelligence, Stella. You expect me to believe you’re not fleeing your home to attend your inflammatory writing workshops? If not that, then perhaps some gentleman caller. Whatever the reason, not only do you disgrace yourself, but your behavior implicates the family name. I will not continue having my name slandered by your carelessness.”

“Father, I swear I’m not…”

“We’ve asked very little of you in exchange for the comforts you enjoy. But you’ve made your contempt for us painfully plain, Stella. Your mother and I are in agreement. Henceforth, you are being disavowed. We’ve arranged for transportation to America, where you will stay with your mother’s sister. After you disembark, your life is yours to live however you please. You can tarnish your own reputation without damaging ours any further.”

I hear the words and yet my first thought is not of losing family or any young girl’s dream of the perfect doll’s mansion for a home. It is of a modest tavern with a leaky roof somewhere in a countryside I will never see again.

* * * * *

The boat drops anchor in New York Harbor on the last day of 1969; the thematic irony couldn’t have escaped my poet’s heart if it tried. With nothing to my name but the two suitcases I carry off the boat, I trudge all over the docks searching in vain for an aunt I’ve never met. After the disembarking crowds dissipate, it becomes easier to take in the American portside. Narrow brick shop fronts litter the docks like toy soldiers. Vendors cry out sales pitches in muddled accents, attempting to drown out the bellowing horn blasts of docking ships or the constant whistling of nearby factories. It seems like every decibel of the general din is competing for the attention – and pocketbooks, it must be said – of every casual passerby.

It isn’t a sound that arrests my own attention, but the sight of a decorative wrought-iron sign hanging from one of the brick shop fronts. Outside a bookstore called Inkwell’s, I see a motley gaggle of people watching what I assume is a street performer. When I get closer to peer through the wall of pea coats, I see a solitary figure performing some kind of dramatic reenactment.

The actor is a whirlwind of energy. It isn’t his youth that gives him that advantage, but the vulnerability of his performance that makes my heart flutter. He is reciting the conclusion of Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities and perfectly executes both characters in the work’s final installment: the condemned seamstress and the martyr Sydney Carton. He manipulates his voice expertly between a high-pitched Cockney and a husky baritone eerily close to Father’s tone. Once the seamstress’ death is nigh, he dramatizes Carton’s famous monologue, left unuttered in the novel. The soliloquy is captivating.

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

As he bows his head, the audience is left in suspense, waiting on tip-toes to see if there is more. In those moments, I cannot hear fog horns or factory whistles or aggressive salesman. I am locked into the sincere delivery of one of literature’s most famous concluding sequences. I can see how much the actor believes in the words, how they fuel his white-knuckled fist held frozen over his heart, how they pulse in the crow’s feet radiating from the corner of his closed eyes.

When he finally lifts his head, I remember to breathe. Despite a thin glaze of tears over them, his eyes seem to grin in the satisfaction of having done the words justice. I wonder if I’d ever be the same. Every individual applauds fervently, some whooping and hollering, while others remove dollar bills from their pockets.

His performance was magical.

The young man removes the bowler’s hat from his head and shakes the hands of those who fill his coffers. He displays such charisma, such sincerity, such joie de vivre. As he works through the crowd, I can’t control my racing pulse. No man back home ever elicited this kind of response in me, despite several having tried, probably motivated more from a desire to impress Father than to win me over. My saliva evaporates and as his grinning eyes find my fluttering ones, I wonder if I’ll survive the encounter with his bubbly ease. He is so…American.

“You look like a gal worth meeting,” he says, offering his hand. “Enjoy the show?”

His accent is coarse and unrefined, nothing like the characters he had been impersonating not two minutes ago. But those grinning eyes held me prisoner. I don’t have to ask to know this man was worth meeting.

“I’ve read it half a dozen times,” I reply, trying to conceal how taken I am. I shake his hand and go to pull it away, but he tightens his grip. “Though hearing it performed aloud does give it a life of its own.”

“Fresh off the boat, huh?”

“Pardon?” I can’t help placing my palm on my chest.

“That accent ain’t from this side of the Pond. London?”

My cheeks flush and I nod.

“I knew you were worth meeting,” he says. He kisses my hand before letting go.

“Is this how you make your living?” As the words float in the air between us, I realize they are tinged with a hint of judgment, involuntary though it is.

“Dickens got paid by the word, my fair lady,” he answers quickly. “It’s no coincidence his entire first paragraph is one sentence. Check again if you don’t believe me, but why shouldn’t we profit for saying the words he got paid to write, every cent of them?”

“I suppose I never…”

“And acting is simply a passion project. I work…here.”

He points to the wrought-iron sign hanging outside Inkwell’s.

“A bookkeeper?” I ask, trying to choke down the laughter bubbling up my throat. A chuckle hiccups out of my mouth and after that, it is beyond my help.

“Something funny?”

I can only respond after composing myself.

“My family disowned me for my love of literature,” I explain. “Father found my poetry inflammatory. His socio-elite sensibilities were easily offended. It’s quite ironic that the first American I meet works at a bookshop.”

“I knew you were worth meeting, Miss…”

“Stella,” I finish his sentence. “Stella Darling.”

“Darling indeed,” he replies. “Can I let you in on a little secret? Bookworm to bookworm?”

He beckons me closer and I lean my ear closer to his lips.

“I’m not a bookkeeper. I’m Inkwell’s resident playwright.”

I can’t help but flash a smile to the leaden sky above us.

“Well, your passion for the written art shows in your performance,” I say. “It was lovely to meet you, Mr…”

“Leaving so soon?” he says, without providing his name.

“I’m staying with my aunt, but I can’t seem to find her.”

“Then, let me cook you a warm dinner. I live in the loft above the shop. If you join me for dinner, I’ll give you my name and then we won’t be strangers anymore. Please, I’ve never met someone quite as…ladylike as you.”

He knows before I can utter a word that he has vanquished my resistance and I follow him to the loft. The actor’s attempt at a roast beef stew leaves much to be desired, but the conversation is delectable. Hearing him describe the written word as nourishment of the soul makes me feel weightless and triples the distance between me and my old life across the Atlantic. He speaks of chasing dreams and his addiction to ideas and how his writing aims to change his audience fundamentally. It’s all music to the ears of an impressionable young poet.

After hours of animated discussion, I find myself yearning to know every ounce of him. I was his from the first moment I saw his grinning eyes. So, when he kisses me, my fate is cinched as I let all inhibition melt away. We give ourselves to each other in the waning moments of the 1960s. After, we lie in his cot, half-covered by a pile of clothes when I hear fireworks explode somewhere in the distance, signaling the turn of the decade.

“You owe me a name, young man,” I say, trying to lather him with a forced coquettish air. I expect to be swallowed by his grinning eyes and am instead met with a pallid, mournful gaze that looks alien on his face.

“Life is so cruel, Stella,” he says. “I am so very sorry.”

He rocks my head off his chest and finds his pants strewn over the bedside. As he searches his pockets, I feel scared that I had been too trusting and wonder if I am in legitimate danger. But all he removes from the pocket is a folded piece of yellowish paper. As I unfold it, he caresses my cheek.

“I didn’t mean to deceive you, Stella. You have to believe me. I promise I didn’t mean to take advantage of you. But when I saw you, I couldn’t help my gut feeling that you were a gal worth meeting. My Lucie Manette.”

I saw the picture of an old Uncle Sam whose point is screaming, “I Want You!” William Richards had been conscripted to the United States Army to assist in the escalating conflict in Vietnam.

“What does this mean?” I ask, feeling every blow in the battle waging inside my belly between sadness and shame.

“I report for duty in two days.”

“When will you be back?”

I saw two answers hover between his lips, but much like Sydney Carton’s prophetic last words, they were left unspoken. I could see the words nonetheless. He didn’t know when he’d be back. But he also didn’t know if he’d be back. Ah, how fleeting feels can be. Despite the near freezing temperatures outside, I throw on my clothing and haul my suitcases down the stairs, hoping no one would look twice at my disheveled state. Despite the wisdom that the docks after midnight is not an ideal place for a young lady, I run as far as my legs will take me.

I remember New Year’s Eve 1969 not as the day I arrived in the United States, or as the turn of a tumultuous decade, or even as the first time I gave myself to a man, my life changed forever.

It will always be the day I met, and then lost, Billy Richards.

Charlie Moss starved to death. I carried Charlie up to the Greenville Sanitarium myself. There was no money. The doctor looked at him despite it, but it was too late. Charlie died all the same. Doc said it was pneumonia, but I knew better. Good Ol’ Charlie starved and froze.

The work ran out a good while back. Most everyone we knew had hopped the cars for Nashville, or Birmingham, but when Charlie got sick I stayed there with him. That shanty was cold, what with the wind blowing in through the chinks, and Charlie was real thin. Hell, so was I. It wouldn’t be long until I was too weak to chop the wood, and then we would both freeze, if'n we didn’t starve first. I couldn’t cut wood fast enough now to heat the plywood walls of that shack, but I did my best to keep Charlie warm. With all of that though, there wasn’t much to do about feeding him. It was nothing but a damned shame for Ol’ Charlie, is what it was, that he picked the very worst time to go and get sick.

I knew Charlie Moss my whole life, going all the way back to grade school in Bristol, and then we did our service time in France together afterward. Once back home I courted Charlie’s sister until she ran off with a medicine show drummer. She never did come back home. I always wondered if she ran away from that town, or if'n it was me she ran from?

It hurt some when Charlie died. I cried a bit when I got back to the shanty alone, and I kicked that dog for watching me do it.

But for me the car was empty. Those able had already gone to where the work was, leaving the shanty-town long before cold struck the mountains. I jumped the train on the eastern slope when her speed was down, the wind shivering me in my shirtsleeves. I looked back once through the boxcar door and that dog was running alongside, but she couldn’t hang with it for long, could she? I mean, I would have brought her along, but how could I hold that dog, run with the train, and jump the car, too?

It was good that I was alone, my mood being sure enough sour. The rough plank floor of that car gravelled my ass with every clickety-clack, so that I was fairly miserable when we passed through the gap. I tipped my slouch hat down for a nap, but couldn’t sleep for thinking of Charlie Moss. They buried my friend with everything he owned, excepting that dog, of course. Charlie sure thought highly of that bitch. I expect he starved himself while slipping his slivers to it. That was the kind of friend Ol’ Charlie was. I had watched that dog lick Charlie’s face right before I toted him into Greenville. Charlie had smiled as he wrapped her head in his arms. I reckon that was the last time Charlie Moss ever smiled on this Earth.

Charlie would have been plumb disappointed to hear of it, of me leaving his dog to chase after the train. But damn it, if I didn’t find work I would like as not starve too, then what would that dog do? Hell-fire! She was better off than any of us! She’d go right on catching rabbits, I reckoned.

I left the train as it was sailing down off the Cumberland Plateau. It was a fast stretch, but distance was mounting. If I was going to ditch, it would need be soon. I hit gravel feet first, but from there it was ass-over-tea kettle, so that it hurt pretty good when I stopped rolling. It would be a long, hungry walk back to that shanty, and cold over every bit of this mountain, but I knew that dog would be there waiting, lying across Charlie’s olive-drab army blanket, never understanding why she was left there alone.

I knocked the dust and gravel from my duds the best I could, and started walking. I reckon I’m not the man to betray a friend, not even a dead one, nor his damned cur dog, neither.