The Intuitive, Part Two

Black Book, number 62. May 13-21, 2008

I did not, in fact, ever make my way back to the Intuitive’s.

I traveled for what seemed like a very long time in that boat, and at no time in my journey was I ever aware of light sneaking in under the blindfold (which for some reason it never occurred to me to remove). The experience was oddly soothing, and I rolled in and out of almost narcotic sleep as the boat bobbed along in the darkness.

I was reminded of an old carnival ride I had once gone on with my father, a Tunnel of Love sort of thing, and I can still recall being mesmerized by the experience. I had the distinct impression that the boat journey the Intuitive sent me on was also through some sort of similar underground system of tunnels, a winding subterranean labyrinth of water. I have a vague memory of reaching out with my right arm at some point and brushing up against something solid, textured, and damp. Eventually, I guess, I fell into a deep sleep, and when at last I emerged from this coma-like slumber, I was curled up in a pile of damp leaves and brush that was heaped up against the rusty fence of a moldering tennis court.

This tennis court, I was to learn, was on the grounds of a long-abandoned estate somewhere in Wisconsin. As I stirred and tried to get my bearings, I became aware that I was moving about uncertainly on four legs. A crow appeared in the sky above me and settled on the top of the fence.

“You are Raymond Trempeleau,” he said.

I told him that he was mistaken, and offered him my real name.

The crow fluttered his wings and glared at me. “That is your human name,” he said. “Or was, and may yet be. But as a fox cannot bear the name of its human counterpart, here you will be known as Raymond Trempeleau. If you have some strong objection to that, I will go on my way and you may remain Raymond Trempeleau forever. My advice to you, however, is that you abide by our rules, try to learn what we have to teach you here at the Academy, and accept your fate even as you cling to the hope that it will be temporary.”

With that the crow rose back up into a bright morning sky and disappeared into the distance.

I’m sure that on some level I was stunned and alarmed by these developments, but I wasn’t functioning on that level—apparently not, at any rate—and it struck me, I guess, as somehow preordained, and I accepted my fate with a mixture of curiosity and glum fascination. I was Raymond Trempeleau. I was a fox, and I was possessed, so far as I could tell, of all the necessary attributes and instincts of a fox. That very first day I killed and ate several mice.

That afternoon I met a coyote who told me we were in the same boat, prompting a bit of confusion on my part. “The boat I arrived on?” I asked. “Or the same predicament?”

The coyote shrugged. “Same difference. I’ve been here for a long time. I’m guessing it’s doubtful I’m ever going back. At this point I have mixed feelings. I don’t want to be sad anymore in the world, and I’ve discovered I sort of like being a coyote. I’m a good coyote.”

“I want to go back,” I said without hesitation.

“I’d say your chances are running about fifty-fifty these days,” he said. “A lot of those who seem to end up here are probably lost cases, but I’ve nonetheless seen some strange and remarkable things. My best advice would be to listen to whatever bird they send you.”

“A crow,” I said.

“Oh boy,” he said. “Yeah, I’d listen to the crow.” With that he turned from me and ambled away.

The crow came to me again the next morning, and I was told in no uncertain terms that it was in my best interests to be in attendance when he paid his visits. If he arrived at the tennis court and found me absent for whatever reasons he would not come again for a week. I had noticed that there were all sort of creatures at what the crow insisted on calling The Academy, and asked him why I was a fox.

“I can assure you it is no accident,” the crow said. “I would advise you to spend some time mulling that question.”

I told him that I had in fact given a good deal of thought to the question, but had arrived at no conclusions.

“I’ll tell you right now that I’m not in the habit of answering questions,” the crow said. “From here on out that is your responsibility. But are you familiar with the old story of the fox and the grapes?”

I admitted that I was unfamiliar with the particulars of that story.

The crow fixed me with his dark and inscrutable stare for a moment, and then said, “The fox desperately wants the grapes, but he cannot reach them. So, unable to obtain the grapes, and too shiftless to solve the problem with creativity or determination, he proclaims indifference and tried to convince himself and others that he did not truly desire the grapes in the first place. Sound familiar?”

I had no idea what the crow was getting at, but kept my silence for fear of his withering disapproval.

The crow sighed. “It’s a metaphor,” he said. “You desperately wanted those grapes, or all sorts of things that could stand in for the grapes, yet you’ve spent your life cultivating an attitude of indifference in the face of all the things you want but have convinced yourself you cannot have simply because you are too lazy and insecure to work for them. This has made you a furtive and emotionally elusive human being. It has also made you terribly unhappy.”

I knew better than to disagree with the crow, and he scoffed at my silence, rose from the fence, and flew away without another word.

The next morning I was curled up in my den and trying to sleep through a torrential downpour. I’d been up all night trotting across the countryside and had gorged myself on a bird that I guessed was a pheasant. I was awakened by the shouting of the crow, and when I emerged hesitantly from my resting place, he flung a walnut that hit me squarely in the head.

“Wake up,” he said.

“I’m awake,” I told him.

“You are still a very long way from knowing what that word means,” the crow said. “You will await my arrival every morning, rain or shine, or you will not see me for a week. If it happens twice in succession you will be waiting two weeks, and I can tell you that in two weeks an animal can go well beyond any hope of transformation. You are familiar with the word ‘feral’?” I said that I was. “Happens all the time,” the crow said.

He stood there atop the fence, studying me and seemingly oblivious to the rain. “I have a question for you,” he said. “This applies to your life as a human, and you should be careful to consider and answer it in that context.” I nodded and then shook the rain from my fur.

“On a miserably cold and icy day you see an old woman so stooped and hobbled that she can move upright only with great effort, and very slowly,” the crow said. “She is accompanied by a dog that appears to be even further along in its decline than its mistress. You suspect this woman is underdressed for the weather. Gazing upon this spectacle, what is it you feel?”

“Great sadness,” I said without hesitation.

“Fox!” the crow cried, and then rose from the fence with a shriek and flew off into the rain. I crawled back into my den and fell sound asleep.

I was awake and waiting for the crow when he arrived the next morning.

“I have a question for you,” he said. He repeated word for word the question of the previous day.

“Great pity,” I answered without hesitation.

“Fox!” the crow cried, and once again rose from the fence and flew away.

That night I wandered in the fields for hours and managed to catch and eat several mice. My heart was not in it, however; I was troubled, and worried that the mice were creatures who shared my own predicament. It was no longer purely instinctive for me to think and behave like a fox. All night my head was filled with painful human memories and regrets, and when I finally made my way back to my den, my sleep was disturbed by vivid dreams and nightmares.

I was up and pacing in the tennis court long before the arrival of the crow. Perhaps it was because I was sleep deprived and anxious, but the crow’s eventual appearance seemed later than usual. He once again stared me down and then proceeded to repeat his query of the previous two days.

“Gazing upon this spectacle, what is it you feel?”

“Great sympathy,” I answered, again without hesitation.

“Fox,” the crow said, this time almost sadly, and then lifted his wings, rose from the fence, and flew away.

That night I once again roamed through the fields, but I was preoccupied and returned to my den after only a couple hours. I did not kill or eat anything. I was experiencing the most ridiculous of cravings: Chicken noodle soup with buttered crackers. I was also pining to hear music—Hank Williams and Chuck Berry and James Brown and Slim Harpo and Albert Ayler. I must have spent at least two hours making lists in my head of all the musicians I loved and couldn’t imagine living without. I missed my records. In my mind I went through every room of my old apartment, attempting to inventory and remember every one of my prized possessions and its history. I even tried to remember every pair of shoes I owned.

I could not imagine living the rest of my life as a fox. I also knew that I desperately did not want to end up like the coyote, but at the same time I was no closer to understanding what was expected of me. With great difficulty I examined my life in the months and years leading up to my visit to the Intuitive. What was the crow getting at? Had I, in fact, at some point in my past life seen the old woman and the dog of the crow’s story? I felt certain that I had not. Nonetheless, as I tossed and turned in my den, I tried to see the old woman and the dog, exactly as the crow had repeatedly described them. How did they make me feel? I wasn’t quite sure, beyond the answers I’d already provided. I couldn’t quite see them, or couldn’t see myself seeing them. Surely, though, I thought, I had in my life seen spectacles that were at least as sad, pitiful, and heartbreaking as the old woman and her dog struggling along together in the cold.

The next morning I was as miserable as I had yet been since finding myself in that place. I had reverted to thinking almost entirely as a human being, and as a result was starving. I screwed up the courage to unburden myself to the crow in the hope that he would take pity on me and send me back to the world as a human being.

“I miss my life,” I told the crow the moment he made his appearance and got settled on the fence. “I was up all night thinking about how much I miss all my things.”

The crow shrieked with what felt like genuine rage. “Fox! Wretched fox! Things? You miss your things?” He immediately took flight, and I watched him disappear, a black fury that was eventually folded into the gray sky.

How I hated that fucking crow! I passed the rest of the day in a funk, alternately dozing and pacing anxiously in the ruins of the tennis court. I did not venture out at all that night. Instead I sat outside my den, studying the moon and staring out into the darkness of the fields.

The next morning the crow did not appear at his usual time. He did not, in fact, appear at all. Nor did he appear on the following morning. I was tired of his games, and though I seriously considered running off in search of human habitation—and human voices—I stayed where I was and was dutifully waiting when the crow finally appeared on the third morning.

“I have a question for you,” he said almost the instant he had taken up his perch on the fence. I sat and stared at him. The crow stared back. I’ve no doubt he could sense my frustration and impatience. I was, I felt sure, trembling. After a long several moments he proceeded to describe the same scene with the old woman and the dog, and to ask, “Gazing upon this spectacle what is it you feel?”

“Angry!” I shouted. “Angry! Angry! Angry!”

The crow said nothing in reply. He merely rose up from the fence and flew away into the distance.

I didn’t see the crow for a week after that, with the exception of a few occasions when he appeared in the sky above me and shouted, “Things! Things! Things!” I was increasingly disinclined to go through the motions of a being a fox. I had human memories—How could I ever make it as a fox? I could hear snippets of the Adagio from Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. What proper fox could do that? I was also tormented by the memory of coming home one day to find a long box taped together to resemble a coffin on my front steps. This box was labeled—in very large letters—VAMPIRE. Inside the box I found a photo of myself. A stake had been shoved through my heart. The box was also heaped with bulbs of garlic, under which I discovered a cross that was constructed from painted wood I recognized as coming from a picture frame I had once made for an old girlfriend for one of her paintings. I don’t know why that memory should have returned to me just then, but it did.

About the same time as I was being tormented by this memory, it began to get very cold. Winter was clearly coming. One morning a few days later I woke to the whole world coated with ice, and freezing rain continued to fall all day. By evening the rain had turned to heavy, wet snow. I was restless and hungry, so I ventured out anyway, and somewhere in my rambles I caught my foot on something and suffered a tear that extended from one of my toenails clear up into the meat between my pads. The injury bled profusely. I was also by this time coated with ice, my fur matted and heavy.

Despite my increasing unhappiness, or perhaps because of it, I continued to drag myself from the den each day to wait for the crow. When he finally did arrive, it was on a morning when the countryside in every direction was covered with heavy snow. I saw him, black as motor oil, coming from a great distance away. If ever a bird in flight could be described as dawdling, it was that crow. He appeared to be moving in slow motion; he was almost strolling above that endless landscape of white. When he eventually reached the tennis court and settled into his customary perch, he proceeded to ignore me for several moments while he picked through his feathers with his beak and groomed himself.

When he finally turned his attention to me, the expression in his eyes was cold, even more unreadable than usual. What, I wondered, had the crow once been? Or had he always been a crow? Perhaps, I sometimes had reason to believe, he was actually a stern, no-nonsense angel in a crow costume.

“You look a fright,” he said to me.

“I am lonely,” I said.

“Is that right? Still missing your things?”

“I’m missing my life.”

“It wasn't a life that seemed to give you much enjoyment,” he said.

“I miss it all the same,” I said.

“I think you miss the convenience and creature comforts that are accessible to even many of the most miserable human beings,” he said.

“You’ve deliberately twisted my words to conform to your preconceived opinion of me,” I said.

“My poor opinion of you is based entirely on the poor opinion of yourself and your fellow men that you had prior to coming here,” he said. “You long ago ceased to acknowledge anyone’s pain or needs but your own. I’ve seen no indication that you’ve vanquished those poor opinions. If you were to go back now you’d only be going back to exactly who you were.”

“How do you know exactly what I was?”

The crow once again tried to stare me down. “Because you know exactly what you were,” he said. “And that’s why you’re here.”

And with that, the crow was once again gone.

It snowed every night, and each morning seemed to be colder than the previous. I wondered where I really was. Could this place truly be Wisconsin, or was it actually some alternate world, a laboratory or testing ground for lost souls? I had traveled a great distance around the countryside in every direction, and I had yet to encounter a single human or even a sign of human habitation. My damaged foot was slow to heal—on several occasions I had caught myself thinking, “I need to see a doctor.” Whenever I left my den or the tennis court it was very rough going. I was limping and labored and in pain, and the snow was getting deeper by the day, obscuring all manner of snags and hazards.

The next day when the crow arrived—and it may have been several days later, or even a week—I addressed him before he’d even had a chance to get settled. “Please,” I said. “I want to go back.”

“What have you learned here?” the crow asked.

“That I want to go back,” I said. “That I am miserable as a fox. I’ve already forgotten most of what I used to know.”

“You’d already forgotten most of what you used to know long before you ever came here,” he said. “That was part of your problem.”

“I’m talking about the fox things.”

“And I am talking about the human things,” the crow said. “It seems as if you’ve fallen into the same trap here as you did back in your old life.”

“I want the grapes,” I shouted.

“If you really want the grapes,” he said. “you’re going to have to figure out how to get them.”

IT WAS A long and terrible winter, and I did not see the crow again for several weeks. I had to force myself to hunt once more to fend off starvation, although I can’t deny that there were many, many times when I seriously considered curling up in my den and giving up.

Then one miserably cold day, as I was emerging from my den, I saw an old woman so stooped and hobbled that she could move upright only with great effort. She was propped up by a cane, moving very slowly, and seemed underdressed for the weather. The woman’s body was bent toward the ground at somewhere between a 45- and 90-degree angle, and it was clear that only with great difficulty could she lift her head or turn it from side to side. She was accompanied by a dog that appeared to be even further along in its decline than its mistress.

I limped over to the woman, calling out to her. She paused and cocked her head slightly in the direction of my voice. One cloudy eye searched for my face, and then she said, somewhat warily, “Yes?”

“I just wanted to say hello and ask if there was anything I could do to help you,” I said.

“Oh, that’s dear of you,” she said. “But this old boy and I are taking our sweet time and getting along just fine. We are experienced and intrepid explorers, and this is always the highlight of our day. Your acknowledgment—the fact that you have seen us—is the only gift I require, and I thank you for that.”

I followed the woman and her dog through a short tunnel and we emerged into bright sunlight, at a place where the path led into an expanse of heavily wooded forest. The woman somehow managed to bend her body even further, to the point where she was obviously struggling to maintain her balance. She fumbled a bit unclipping the dog’s leash from its collar, and she was talking gently and patting the dog’s head the entire time.

She then gave him a little swat on his haunches, and said, “Go now.” The dog waddled off, zig-zagging excitedly, and disappeared into the trees as the woman cheered him on and clapped her hands with excitement.

I was watching this scene with great wonder when the crow suddenly appeared on the branch of a tree next to the path.

“Gazing upon this spectacle what is it you feel?” he asked.

“Love,” I said.

“Go now,” the crow said.

When I once again found myself in my human body, I was sleeping on a bus stop bench six blocks from my apartment. I was startled awake, and the other people at the crowded bus stop were all keeping their distance and watching me with some combination of fear and pity. As I stood up and was taking an inventory of my limbs and my surroundings, one man stepped timidly forward and tried to hand me a dollar.

“Fox!” I shouted at him. “I want the grapes!”

And then I turned away and, whooping, ran all the way home.