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The Smell of Leaves

Burning in Winter



Starring a pile of leaves, a man with a rake, and

the smell of burning flesh



“With all the beer bongs, the parades, the flashing tits and the free beads, it’s easy to forget what Mardi Gras is all about. I didn’t even know what Shrive Tuesday was until this. Now I’ll pay attention.”

–Chuck Taylor, High Times Magazine


Filmed on Location





I saw him hassling the other customers of the coffee shop before he ever came to me. Like an Egyptian beggar, he leaned in with supplicated hands, his clothes frayed, skin coated with a mosaic of dust and grime. Try as he may, he wasn’t able to persuade the patrons to pause drinking their coffee, or turn away from staring at the gathering throngs of people outside the large window. The man was background for the larger show, nothing more.

My head was throbbing from yesterday’s Lundi Gras celebration. Along with thousands of others, I had danced and cheered as Zulu and Rex arrived marking the official start of the Lenten Carnivale. Like a middle-aged Rave, we gyrated and consumed as if the spirit of Pan himself was within us. It had been too easy to lose myself in the large crowd. Too easy to forget my own demons and become an appendage of a greater namelessness.

But now, I was paying the price. Lightning cascaded and thunder shook my bones as my hangover multiplied the actions of my overworked synapses.

My turn now, the beggar headed towards me. I stared deep into the chicory blackness of my coffee and willed him to turn away. I had my own problems and wasn’t feeling very qualified to help others until I had solved my own. His shadow crept over the white of the tablecloth until the coffee and my two ringless hands were embraced in his darkness.

“Do you know the smell of leaves burning in winter?” he asked.

The aroma of hot chocolate with marshmallows – steam drifting upwards, the heat warming shivering hands.

The crispness of cold air.

The earthy aroma of an old man in black galoshes, faded denim dungarees, green cap tending a pile of leaves with a long rake — earth burning.

The stench of death, a temporary stillness of the living, until the white blanket is lifted.

“Yes,” I said.

We both inhaled, the gasp slicing conversation. Me because of the sight of his haunted, pain-filled blue eyes; him because of my response.

A tear slid through the grime upon his face as he grunted and pulled out the chair across from me. I glanced around, now the center of attention. Eyebrows were raised, mouths turned down in disgust. As soon as eye contact was made, it was averted, as if I had become as unclean as this beggar.

“Finally,” he whispered.

He kept his head down, but stared longingly at my coffee, the steam laddering up, the aroma of Louisiana thick in the haze. With the back of my hand, I pushed the cup and saucer across the table towards him.

I watched as he grasped the cup in trembling hands, brought it up and inhaled deeply. His fingernails were black and the creases of his fingers were like roads on a busy map. The rest of his hand was covered by a half-glove, the original color a mystery. A jacket, once brown, was unwinding from the sleeves, long strings dangling. His once-blonde hair was now streaked with earth and nearly black. His cheekbones were prominent, proof of feastless days and sleepless nights. And then there were his eyes...eyes that seemed to be forever brimming with tears, held back only by a surface tension of anger and self-revulsion.

My gaze fell back to his shadow upon the table. Yes, I understood fully the emotions the man felt. I saw them every time I looked in the mirror, caused by my own misplaced loyalty and ignorant inaction.

“Have you awoken to the screams of a child?”

God please no.

I stared into his eyes and he into mine.

He nodded once. “I thought so,” he said. A tear escaped. He caught it with the back of his hand, the sodden fabric of his glove.

I inhaled to steady myself. I pinched the inside of my wrist to ensure I was awake. My eyes fluttered shut as I relived scream after scream of a young boy, his pain and agony rebounding off the smiling faces of Mary and Baby Jesus. I remember heading towards the Sacristy, mortal anger promising divine justice, but stopped at the door by Old Father Prestor, the firmness of his hands upon my shoulders belying his age. His eyes were cold. His lips were a thick crevice in a face full of creases.

Go back to what you were doing, he said.

This is none of your business, he said.

I will handle this, he said.

And I remember turning away from the screams as I obeyed the Church. My naiveté condemning my soul, my morals bartered for venal favors.

“My name is Matthew,” said the beggar. “They sent me to find you. You are to be my confessor.”

Matthew. A hundred lessons from seminary flashed through my mind. Mathew cum Levi. Apostle of Christ. Martyred for converting the King of the city of Man-eaters to the true path. Matthew. Ascended into heaven. The Gospel.

But it was the combination of the words, the formation of the sentence that confused me: Matthew...they...confessor. I was not prepared for this man’s pain.

“Listen, my Son. Drink my coffee. I can provide you with food and directions to where you can get a shower and clean clothes. But as far as being a confessor, I’m out of that business for now.”

He set the coffee down and gripped my hands.

“You haven’t a choice. It’s you they told me to search for. They gave me three questions that only one would answer, could answer. That one, they said, was to be my confessor.” He squeezed my fingers painfully. “I must have a confessor to continue. Please sir. You must help me. You are to be my confessor.”

I pried his hands away from my own. “But you’ve only asked me two questions. How do you know it’s me?”

His eyes crossed and uncrossed. I winced when he hit himself on the side of the head three times.

“Yes. Yes. Of course. The third question. You must forgive. I’ve been searching everywhere since Our Lord’s birthday. Searching everywhere but finding nothing except hatred and apathy. Now I have found someone who understands. I have found you and must ask you the third question. I am ready to make you mine. As The Shrove said, ready to be shriven.” Excitement, fear and determination pulsed through the permanence of the man’s sorrow. He sat straighter, then asked the third question. “What is the sound of flesh burning?”

I jerked as a thousand nightmares carried me back to the original event. I knew the answer— had relived that sound a thousand sleepless times.

The snaps as the fatty juices burst through skin. The pops. The sound of skin blistering, before it boils to liquid.

“It sounds like popcorn,” I said.

And it all came back in a rush.



***

I was ten. The day was cold and crisp, but the sun was shining. Only the edges of the lawn and a few hidden spots beneath the azalea bushes still had snow from yesterday. This was the South, after all, and snow rarely lasted.

I had been stuck in the house all morning while my mother made me a new suit. Every year it was the same fight, with me fidgeting and wanting to run with my best friend Big Red, my mom pinning me in place as she adjusted and readjusted the woolen fabric.

Finally, it was to the motorized lull of the sewing machine that I shot out the door and into the yard. The ground rattled as I ran through a thickness of dead leaves— their hues orange and yellow and brown, each crisp in its death. I called out to my dog to join me.

I called for ten minutes. Fifteen. Worried, I ran to the window of my mother’s sewing room, but she hadn’t heard me. Across the street Mr. Jenks stared at me. He tended to a burning pile of leaves, only occasionally stirring with a long rake.

I wasn’t allowed to cross the street or to speak with Mr. Jenks, especially since he’d shot Big Red with a .22 rifle last year, claiming my Irish Setter had gotten into his chickens. As my mother was fond of saying, Mr. Jenks was bad news all around.

I walked to the edge of our property, my toes touching the road. I looked back and could still see mom through the window, busy.

“You seen my dog, Mr. Jenks? You seen Big Red?”

Instead of answering, he grinned.

“Mr. Jenks, did you hear me?”

He wouldn’t answer, so I looked both ways and took one long step into the road. I asked him again, and he still ignored me. It was then that I noticed the peculiar redness in the pile of orange and yellow leaves, the odd contour of the pile. I let my feet propel me closer until I could hear a noise, like the sound of a steak on a grill when the fat drops onto the coals. I smelled a sweetness that was at once strange and well-known. I got close enough to see the last of the red hair spark off the skin of my best friend and to watch the flesh bubble beneath. The sounds increased as the flames became higher.

Snap. Pop. Snap snap.

Yes, just like popcorn.



***

“They call themselves The Shrove. They came to me in my dreams and told me, explained that I could be shriven, freed from my guilt. I had to follow the way of the apostles, they said. I had to be as Jesus, they said. I had to save the world."

We’d left the café on Dauphine and turned left. He was hard to follow in the crowds already gathering for the parades. The masked and unmasked bumped and jostled me as I struggled to make my way through the throng. At St. Ann we turned left and moved into the mass of humanity that had taken over Bourbon Street. I grabbed the back of his jacket and allowed him to tug me through. The noise and the smells were nearly overwhelming and I found myself wishing for the quiet comfort of the small café, but it wasn’t until we hit Jackson Square that we finally stopped. There, in the shade of Andrew Jackson mounted on his stallion and beneath the steeples of the St. Louis Cathedral, his story began to unfold.

“What do they...these Shrove look like?” I asked.

Vendors hawking funnel cakes and ice cream, mimes, a jazz band, and crowds of tourists moved around us. At the large concrete base of the statue, we were protected, our conversation ignored.

“I’m not sure. I've never seen them. It was more like I just knew they were there, a presence in my dreams. Many of them there in the darkness.”

For not the first time I wondered if he was making all of this up. But no—there were the questions, after all. And the answers. Who else could answer the questions? Who else had lived a life of specific tragedy? Plus, I honestly had nothing to lose by going along with him. If in the end I realized he was truly demented, then I suppose I would join him.

“Go on.”

“I don’t know how they found me—I was just a high school English teacher, for God’s sake. It took me a week to make my way down here from Evanston. I was told to leave everything and tell no one, to take a vow of poverty and of celibacy.”

“And you believed it all?”

“They knew everything. They knew it all.” So intense was his gaze I could only nod. “They knew why I cried at night and why I kept my shades drawn. No way could they have figured it out.” He leaned in close, his lips an inch from my ear. “In fact, when it gets dark we can meet them. I’m to take you with me. We’re going to save the world.”



***

Night had fallen to the screams of a hundred thousand revelers. The Celebration Carnelevare– Farewell to the Flesh –was in full swing as the nearly manic crowd engorged itself on a pre-Lenten binge as if their souls knew the truth of the mid-February Christian holiday— older than Christianity, rooted in the worship of Pan and the Grecian Orgies it inspired.

As a priest, I wanted to remind the people of the importance of Ash Wednesday as the start of Lent where we recognized the sacrifices of Our Lord Jesus as he survived in the wilderness. Then of course there was Good Friday and Easter. So far away, yet intimately connected to tonight’s celebration. It was tragic how so few remembered that the end of the celebration was the death of Jesus and the ascension of a God. The greater Lenten concept wasn’t something people paid particular attention to as they groped and groaned among strangers.

We’d waited in Jackson Square until dusk, then again entered the throng of revelers. Matthew knew where he was going, but I didn’t, and after getting separated twice, he gripped my hand and pulled me along. Through alleys and side streets, between buildings. Although I had been in New Orleans for three months, I was soon lost. An hour later, sweat dripping from my skin and chest heaving, we descended a set of stairs and stopped before a closed door. He turned to me in the darkened alcove.

“There’s one more thing.”

I had difficulty finding my breath, and managed only to nod my head.

“You’ll need this.”

He pulled a bag from his jacket. Made of leather and rabbit fur, it was something unexpected, almost Pagan.

I raised an eyebrow as he placed it into my hands. My fingers began wrestling the bag open, but he quickly covered my hands with his own and shook his head.

“Not yet. You’ll know when it’s time. Promise me, not until it’s time.”

Beneath his fierce gaze, I could only nod. I shoved the bag into my jacket pocket and we entered the broad basement. The first thing I realized was that what I had mistaken for a basement was actually a warehouse. The ceiling was at least three-stories high and the floor was easily half the width of a football field. In the center sat a large raised rectangle, and atop this were two rows of six tall posts. Each had chains dangling from its top.

Although it looked like an altar, I immediately identified it as a float. Yet, unlike the garish displays of Mardis Gras, this one was completely unadorned. An old slat board platform, wooden wheels and two long lengths of rope to pull it. If the Mardis Gras floats were for celebration, this lonely thing was for redemption.

“Can’t you feel them? They’re here. The Shrove...”

I watched as he cradled his head and whimpered.

Searching the rest of the space, I realized that we were not alone. It wasn’t like me to miss things like this, but it seemed as if the very act of searching had created the people before me. Unveiled, I saw, eleven pairs of men standing in different parts of the warehouse. There was a familiarity about them. Not that I knew them, no. More like they were as Matthew and I. One person, head hanging, dilapidated life—the other, a guide, but no less stricken. I met each gaze in turn, inspecting them as they inspected me.

“We must change,” said Matthew. “It’s almost time.”

Matthew moved towards the wall to our left, where twelve chests waited. As had the others like him, he opened one and withdrew two robes. The green one he gave to me.

“Wear this.”

The other robe was a patchwork of golds and purples and greens. Where mine was tightly spun satin, his was made from a hundred different fabrics. Although gaudy, no one would ever mistake it for finery. It was the robe of a penitent man.

“The green color stands for faith. Purple is for Justice and the gold stands for power. These are the colors of Mardi Gras. They are the colors of God.”

As I pulled the robe over my clothes, he reached into the chest and withdrew two more objects. One was a crown of thorns, the other was a gold ceramic mask, blank except for two eye holes. No nose. No mouth. No contoured features. Just blank. This he passed to me.

“Wear it, as I wear my own.”

He placed the crown of thorns atop his head and I winced as immediately several trickles of blood began to flow. He merely smiled. Just as suddenly his smile turned to a frown and a gurgle escaped his throat. From around the warehouse, I saw the same thing happening to the others.

I placed the mask over my face. For a few long seconds, I fought claustrophobia, but there were rules here and if I was going to figure this whole thing out, I would have to play the game.

He jerked me towards the back of the platform where a piece of plywood served as a ramp. Stopping at the third post on the left side, he let me go.

“Bind me,” he said, holding out his hands.

After a few false starts, I managed to secure Matthew to the post.

“Now what?”

“We wait, I suppose. I mean I’ve never really done this before.”

“And The Shrove? You trust them?”

“Why not? It’s all a matter of degrees,” he said. “Who would have ever believed that the death of one man would release the world from sin?” The chains rattled as he brought his hands up to his head. His right scratched hard at the ear. Twin lines of blood appeared.

I grabbed at his wrist to keep him from hurting himself, but he jerked away. His right hand gripped his crown and he pressed it deeply into the flesh.

“They say...” he gasped, “they say it’s time.”

From where I stood I could see every inch of the room and except for the deep shadows along one wall, there wasn’t a place to hide. The harder I stared into those shadows, the more uncomfortable I became. The feeling grew until a buzzing crept into my mind. It felt as if a million ants had moved in. Fighting to ignore the feeling, I stole myself to stare deeper into the darkness. The buzzing increased and my hands flew to my head, then the darkness swirled as something moved within it. For the briefest of moments I could have sworn I saw the tip of a tentacle. Green. The color of faith, I remembered.

“Let me tell you of the smell of leaves burning in winter.”

“What?” I staggered and reached out to steady myself. My hand found his chest and came away wet with blood. His face was pinstriped with red.

“The smell of leaves burning in winter. It’s why you’re here, to listen to my confession.”

“Tell me,” I said, trying to ignore the darkness.

“I know the smell of leaves burning in winter,” he said. “I have awoken to the screams of a child. I know the sounds of flesh burning.” He sagged to the floor at my feet. His arms rose in supplication. “Forgive me father, for I have sinned and all my confessions before this are as nothing to what I will tell you now.”

The request was unorthodox, but there was no mistaking the suffering underlying his words. I made the sign and knelt beside him, averting my gaze as I placed my ear close to his trembling lips.

“Tell me of the smell of leaves burning in winter,” I said.

He sighed, the sound of dead leaves rustling along the ground. Like the leaves in my own memory. Mr. Jenks hadn’t killed my pet. The sheriff insisted that the dog had been hit by a truck. The old man had placed the body in the leaves so I wouldn’t see it. He had been trying to spare me.

“The smell of leaves burning in winter, they smell like death. They smell like the end of existence. The end of hope. God, forgive me. I had no idea. I hadn’t a clue.”

“Have you ever awoken to the sounds of a child screaming?” I asked.

“It was my son,” he said. “The sound of a child screaming is the death of the father. The death of the mother. The end of all hope multiplied.”

From his lowered head ran pinkish drops, blood mixed with salty tears. There was still one more question to ask.

“What is the sound of flesh burning?”

“The end of life itself,” he said.

Suddenly cold, he stared at me, his face smeared with tears and blood. He gritted his teeth, the sound like a heavy file against concrete. “I was popular with the children in my school, you see. There was nothing they couldn’t ask of me. I was always there for them. For them, yes, but not my son. God knows how long I’d neglected him. God knows the depth of his pain. I’ve wondered for so long...what if he had come to me? What if he had asked me for help? Would I have paid attention? Would I have been there for him? Would I have done it differently? Even after all this time, I don’t know the answer. I am guilty of the harshest crime. He gave me love. I gave him neglect

As was my own crime, I thought.

“I can only imagine how he felt, because I'll never really know. When I awoke that winter’s morning to the screams of my son burning in the leaf pile...when I ran outside and heard his screams, saw the can of gasoline...when he stopped breathing as his lungs filled with fumes...when his skin...ran like butter...”

I knelt with him for a time. The thorns of his crown scraped my cheek. Finally he looked up.

“The Shrove said that our sacrifice will heal the world. It will heal me, they said. We are twelve and twelve makes one and then thirteen ascend.”

From somewhere far away a church bell rang, signaling the end to Mardis Gras and the beginning of Lent.

“The pouch,” he said.

I pulled up my robe and fumbled the pouch from my pocket. It took a few moments, but I finally managed to retrieve the pouch. I opened it and stared inside at the ash within. I knew without asking where it came from. His gaze was far away as I reached inside, applied the ash to my fingers and made the sign of the cross upon his forehead.

“Man is dust, and from dust you shall return.”

He mimicked my movements and made his own sign of the cross upon my forehead. A smile crept along his mouth, and then his expression went blank, his gaze once again far away. I didn’t dare disturb him, so I closed the pouch and placed it around his neck.

We opened the great doors to the street. Outside, the night was silent. The Feast of the Flesh was over and it was in quiet dark that we twelve confessors grasped the ropes and began pulling the float through the streets.

There would be no crowds for us.

Redemption is a lonely thing, and sacrifice is individual.



***

Story Notes: In the mid-90s my mother told me a story about a friend of hers who came home to find her child burned to death in a pile of leaves. It was called a suicide and I couldn’t help but wonder how a survivor could deal with such a thing. I held onto that question for a number of years until I was asked to present a Mardis Gras story to the Twilight Tales Reading Group in Chicago. I wrote this, then read it out loud in the Red Lion Pub. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when I finished.