Vis A Tergo Muros et Inertiae[*]

 

By

 

Porphyry & Cree

 

 

 

 

 

 

            He moved through matter both mutable and fixed; the air of this autumn night both bitter and sharp as he withdrew deeper within the many and mixed layers of cloth, a hap-hazard collection of cast-off garments of memorae in those fast and fleeting fixations of fashion and other dispossessed dreams which had fallen from grace.

 

            The creature known only to a significant few within the modern day world as Mad Newton; the dark vagabond melded ever so subtly into seams of asphalt and concrete, flowing within the many mortal streams that moved between the many walls and lines of this city; now meandered against the flow of this human static and the traffic of people scattering deeper into the twilight world of another day’s passing. His own gaze as seemingly fixed into the dull away of some other place, yet his eyes were drawn to theirs in passing, hidden away behind the mirrored-lens spectacles and perhaps drawing a little deeper still- If only to wonder what kept their mind and hearts immune to one another; those blinding fixations of yet another period of transition between destinations. For most, he knew, the labors of their day and the near perpetual pursuit of their daily bread in this human race were already either won or lost. Some, he knew, were headed toward whatever place they called home. For a few, there would be someone or something waiting for them there. For others, home was just another hideaway from this world of such deliberate strangers, the place that protected all of their most precious possessions inside some sort of enclosed space with windows, walls, and thick sturdy doors with several myriad forms of locking mechanisms to create the illusion of some such security.

 

            He stopped and stood in the middle of the sidewalk, a seemingly harmless sort of experiment. He watched as they moved about and around him in some kind of unspoken ritual of etiquette, smirking to himself as he watched those arcs around him steadily grow wider the longer he stood there and watched them. By this simple action, he had created something of a paradox to them. And the longer he remained there, in the middle of their pathway between where they were and where they were going, the more disturbed they became by his presence. Some became anxious, others agitated; and yet something like the Red Sea, he watched them draw further apart and away from where he stood.

 

            Such were the things that kept the mind of Mad Newton thus amused, and somesuch the same sort of rationale that had earned him this newest name. There were several other names he remembered, affixed to him in some other place and time. Most of them really didn’t matter anymore, as they were already forgotten by everyone- save for himself, of course. 

 

            As for what strange and curious baubles the mind collects, there were many such things which had fallen into disuse that littered his head. He brushed them all aside as he saw the old woman with her cart on that same corner that she stood everyday. He wondered, as he began to move towards her, that perhaps it was deliberate, or by coincidence, that she chose this place to peddle her curious wares. It seemed logical to sell flowers near that out of the way district that the city had reserved for the dead, and yet just far enough away from the city’s cemetery to allure the eye of the living with fresh blooms. Assuredly, there were better places to buy flowers in the city, as hers were neither genetically enhanced nor in any sense of the term, a perfect sort of beauty. In fact, Newton happened to know that most of what this woman sold was near bout the utter opposite of her competitors’ offerings. Her flowers did not last near as long once they had been cut, beyond the more obvious imperfections that are commonly known to affect the appearances of wildflowers. Yet, it was precisely this that brought those patrons who came here to buy their flowers. It would seem, too often, that their world was already far too cluttered with the appearances of so much perfection; and that once this luster or hue of all this newness began to fade, they were tossed away and replaced.

 

            “Hello Newt,” the old woman’s smile came with a gentle sort of exhale, as if relieved in some indistinct way to see him here again.

 

            “And how are you today, Ms. Chloe?” Newton stood across from her at the cart, a light sort of bow to his head as he kept his arms locked behind him, one hand closed over the wrist of the other and his eyes fell down slightly to see that her flowers, only freshly picked this morning, were already beginning to wither slightly. She kept “her babies” separate, each in a small mason jar with a little water that she mixed with herbs and nutrients. It was actually her intention that people could take her flowers home, and that if they took proper care of them, they could be replanted. Very few did however, thought she never wavered in telling them how to go about it, if she hadn’t already told them before. No one really ever listened to Ms. Chloe’s instructions, even the sparse few who shared in her own intentions and planned to try to get them to germinate in their own pots or garden beds. Most people who passed this way had seen her often enough, and some occasionally came to her to buy flowers, most of those she would never see again. There were a few customers, such as Newton that returned often enough for her to get to know them better, and she rarely failed to inquire about their previous purchases. Her memory had become somewhat more fallible as age took its toll upon her, but she never forgot who had bought what from her on any given day. Even if she knew that most of her flowers would be dead, most often given as gifts by those curiously quaint courtesans or the frequently forgetful lovers of some other woman, somewhere nearby- She kept her disappointment mute in her inquiries when her curiosity had plunged too deep.

 

            “I’m doing alright,” she said as she followed his gaze to shelves of her cart. “What shall it be today then?” Her cataract-dulled blue eyes moved back to his face, one more of those facets of her that seemed to inform the world that she might be 'a little off'. Anyone who knew Ms. Chloe well enough knew that she was originally from West Virginia, though she had lived in the city long enough as to somewhat innocently acquire its dialectics. There were only the vaguest traces of her southern sounding accent in her voice anymore, and she had taken her life through many similar such adaptations to whatever life threw her way. Her simple flower print dresses were one of the few mannerisms that remained to set her somewhat out of place in the city, that and that she still kept a garden at the home she had moved into thirty-five years ago with her husband. Henry Baxter had died twelve years ago, and it was only here that she wasn’t still known as Mrs. Baxter; primarily due to the sign that she had attached to the canopy, which read 'Chloe’s Flora'. She said that she liked the sound of it better than Mrs. Baxter’s Bulbs & Blooms, which was the original name she’d kept over her cart. She claimed it made folk more curious, and that she sold more since she had changed the name.

 

            Newton let her talk to him, knowing that her husband had provided well enough for her to be able to keep her house and the bills paid. But times had changed since his death, and what was once sufficient to keep a person financially afloat began to sink as the costs of living rose. It didn’t particularly bother Chloe Baxter, in what she had to do to make ends meet. Though she loved her flowers and her business, as it got her out and away from that mostly empty house and kept her among the living, all of it was just getting harder and harder for her to do. She had started hiring on one of the neighborhood boys to help her wheel out her cart and get it ready every morning, but they weren’t very reliable- Even if she paid them a whole five dollars to help out.

 

            In her mind, five dollars still held a more significant worth than to the children of this day and place. She could remember working a whole week for five dollars when she was a girl, and she felt most fortunate in that. Once the mines started closing up, the area she had lived in West Virginia dried up, economically speaking. That was one of the reasons her husband and she had had to move to city in the first place, so that he could find some work.

 

            Chloe Baxter never had so much as a cross word to say about her husband of near forty years, nor did she ever have a second thought about trying to remarry- the whole idea of it just struck her as silly.

 

            Despite the fact that most were already quite convinced that the “poor old woman” was already a ways down the road to senility, they knew she was harmless. Some of her more frequent customers considered buying her flowers an act of charity, though they would have never told her so. Chloe Baxter was still a proud woman, and everyone called her Ms. Chloe in this part of the city. After the one occasion she was mugged, there were more than a few that began to keep an eye on her, with an outcry for the police to catch the perpetrator. That was about six years ago, and there was still to be seen Bill Wilkin’s police cruiser to pass by and wave to her as he did. Bill was one of her more frequent customers, though he didn’t really have any place to plant any wild flowers. After his kids had grown up and moved on, he had bought a condo for his wife and himself to live in. They were just less hassle to take care of, and Bill was nearing the age of his retirement from the city police force …

 

            Newton wondered if anyone would remember Chloe Baxter once he was retired, it seemed a fairly simple thing. Newton next thought was about the day that Chloe Baxter wouldn’t be able to come out here anymore, and that really couldn’t be all so far off either. He wondered which would come first, an idle-wile sort of thought as he made a quite deliberate display of bending over to smell a lilac blossom.

 

            “What can I do for you today, Honey?” From perhaps any other woman in this city, that phrase wouldn’t have likely brought a smile to Newton’s face as he rose up again to meet her eye to eye. Bringing a hand forward, he flipped out a folded bill with one hand as he scooped up a black-eyed susan daisy from one of the jars, Chloe smiling until she grabbed and got a closer look at the bill. “I can’t make change for this …”

 

            “And you already know I will be back again, Ms. Chloe.” Newton said as he drew the flower beneath his nose like a glass of wine, closing his eyes as he nodded. “Yes, I think this will do wonderfully for today then.”

 

            “Newton, you could stop here for the next ten years and still have some change coming to you. I just can’t take it,” a slight irritation rising in her voice, Newton’s eyes opening to meet hers once again.

 

            “But of course you can,” he said, his tone level and flat as Chloe Baxter’s face froze for a moment, and then she stuck the bill in her apron.

 

            “Thank you kindly, Newt,” her entire visage changed back to the same genuine sort of smile. “I never really bothered to ask; on account that I don’t like to be nosey, nor do I particularly care to go picking at folks’ more tender areas- But I hope you won’t mind me asking who it is that you are all the time going to see in the cemetery.”

 

            “A very dear friend, Ms. Chloe- I have several of them there,” he said as he walked off, her brow lowering slightly as she watched him move past her cart and walk away from her down the sidewalk. She watched him until he got down to the opposite corner, and then disappeared around the high wall that surrounded and enclosed Still Meadows Memorial Park. It wasn’t long after that she began to pack up her cart for another day, as she had been waiting for him. She knew no one else would be stopping to buy her flowers today. Aside from the fact that more than a few of them were already starting to look rather poorly stood by, it was getting too late for flowers and she had to get herself back home so that she could get those she couldn’t sell into some fresh water.

 

            She hummed to herself an old song about the Shenandoah River as she pushed the cart along that same path she had been walking for several years now, trying not to think that it wouldn’t be too much longer now. Newton always had the queer effect on her of putting her to mind about Henry, probably because he spent so many of his nights in the cemetery. That didn’t particularly seem right, a young man such as he was, being there so often; but Newton always kind of struck her sweet as a honeybee, but a tad off too. Still in all, she didn’t think folk had any right to be calling him Mad Newton; that just didn’t seem none too right at all.

 

            She stood and waited at the first of three crosswalks that she would have to pass to get back home, reaching down into her apron for her cigarettes when she felt something else in there, her brow dipping slightly as she pulled out a hundred dollar bill. She stood and looked at it, waiting a little longer than need be as she studied it and tried to remember how she had came by it, her eyes averting just as the light for the cross walk started blinking “Don’t Walk” again.

 

            “Sometimes, Chloe Baxter, I swear that you must be losing it,” she said to herself as she shook her head and moved around the cart to find where she kept her purse locked up.

 

            As she did, that thin lace of shadows that lay along almost every building’s edge and deeper within the recesses and crevices of every niche, began to move outwards the Sun sank further beneath the city skyscape.

 

            Chloe looked up as the street-lamp flickered to life, moving back behind her cart and then pushing it along as the light changed, allowing her to cross the side street.

 

            As she was near the center, a black sedan crested over the hill, speakers blaring out through the darkly tinted glass as the engine roared. Chloe’s head turned, and she dully blinked twice as the chrome grill of the old Thunderbird screamed towards her at far to fast a pace to even hope to stop.

 

            She moved seemingly too slowly, a vicious pain slamming into her hip as she fell away and a loud crashing followed as the car blasted through her cart.

 

            She thought she must be dead, save for the pain in her side; forcing her eyes to open and as she stared towards the wreckage of her cart.

 

            “My babies,” she muttered before letting her eyes close again. She wasn’t really sure if she'd been hit or not, nor how badly she might be hurt, whether she was going to live …

 

            She just closed her eyes and let fate answer those questions in its own good time. It was too late to change anything about it, or about the any and everything that was her life.

 

            She had no regrets.

 

***

 

            He stood at the base of a sycamore tree, staring down into the face of the flower as he wondered lightly at its name. Assuredly, the dark heart of it could be perceived as an eye, and its petal likened to lashes; but in all this was little more than another mental meandering back towards and inside himself. Like this 'black-eyed susan', the name 'Mad Newton' was really nothing more than what other people thought they could see within him. He didn't even really know who Isaac Newton was before someone had started referring to him by the name.

 

            He began to move again, as he really hadn't any time for all of this self-absorption- His eyes drawn up towards one of the more elaborate stones, this one encarved with the image of an angel atop its summit, staring down towards the grave beneath its feet. Newton wasn't sure if the expression on its face was meant to be one of sorrow or pity; and whilst he suspected that while the other was probably the intentions, it looked more like pity to him.

 

            It also didn't seem to him that an angel would mourn something so inevitable as death, most especially of such a mortal creature. The whole depiction, while quite remarkable in its artistic form, annoyed him as he stepped past it. He only stopped as he came upon a fresh grave; a black top soil still yet uncovered, the earth exposed, as they hadn't laid the sod. He moved to sit at its foot, his eyes never moving towards the stone, but laid just over the flower and locked upon the grave-head. He crossed his legs beneath him and then sighed as his eyes dropped subtly back towards the flower that he kept between himself and the grave, held out before him like some kind of offering.

 

            He reached his fingers softly to one petal and plucked it free, tossing in the air and letting it flutter down towards the bare earth before him.

 

            "He loves you," he said with a smile, and then reached and plucked another petal from the flower's heart. "He loves you not," he said as he flung the torn petal into the air, and watched it flutter slowly downwards...

 

 

***