I've been lying prone in the vast hills of Southern France, if that's what it is right now, for a century. It's a clear day the whole time except for a couple of wispy clouds. There were maggots eating my arm only a few weeks ago somewhere in the rain and mud. A few weeks ago I had an arm that friendly maggots could eat. Valiant, but ultimately futile. Little things.
That's what I remember. It's all muck and maggots. And now vast and empty space without the types of things that craw or wriggle. No where to crawl or wriggle upon. Better that way.
Five hundred years ago a valiant knight rides up this hill and looks down on me with a little laugh. Get up he says with shining locks. Clean like you'd imagine when you're reading the books. Silly when you think about how hot it is. Blazes. And all that armor. He's a nice fellow, but a braggart. A tuft of straw for his hair mocking Don Quixote hundreds of years before he's born. Never trust a Spaniard to take care of himself. A Frenchman with a country house by the side of a lake and he's laughing at an old man whose got to live in the Spanish hillside with only a flock of sheep and their milk to coax his old age.
Artus lies down beside me younger than his face even. A child in so many ways. He's quiet mostly he says because he's tired. I say I'm tired too and that he's laying on my arm. Which he is in the sense of I feel like he is. He's taking up its space. Absentee, it doesn't get its due. Sorry he says. Not a problem. I'm just getting used to it. He tells a joke about a guy who loses his head so he has to become a court jester. Says they were funnier than he remembers them.
Walter walks up and kicks him in the ribs. Back for dinner you boys. He's a barrel of a man, bald like a friar. What hair he has is unkempt and greasy, but its disarray seems to take the place of the missing bits in an effortless way.
I could have sat there for quite awhile as the sun dipped. Even with the sleeping arm, I was peaceful in the rolling grass like I've never much been at home. Not sure where that leaves me.
