Tethered John
John Garvey had always been the strongest man in Phillipsburg. Muscles flowed beneath his skin like snakes in a sack, and he could take a child in each of his hands and lift them clean above his head without a prickle of sweat on his brow. He had not been born that way; that is to say, nature had not contrived to grant him his titanic physique. No; his muscles were of his own making. For, from the age of nine, following a disquieting experience in the crawling hours of morning in which he felt that he were floating up towards the ceiling, he had chained a great rock to his ankle, which he carried everywhere with him.
It lay by his bed as he slept, it sat under the table at his feet like a dog as he ate. It dragged behind him as he fought the mosquitoes for the right to work the land in the dust bowl. And his muscles grew and grew.
He was well-liked by the people of Phillipsburg. Tethered John, they called him. It didn't bother them that he believed he would float away if he ever became detached from his rock; he was a solid guy, a dependable guy. He rebuilt the church nigh on single-handedly after the storm of '52. Streamers of laughing children unfurled behind his decrepit pick-up truck as it stuttered into town belching smoke, and they followed him to the grocery store begging him to tell them the stories again, just one more time, and they listened wide-eyed as he told of how he uprooted a tree with his bare hands, how he pushed a stubborn cow into a field, how he hauled the Partons's jalopy out of the ditch. And when he announced his wedding to his fiancée Martha Pitwater, the whole town smiled for him.
So the guests standing in the field at his wedding, these fine people of Phillipsburg, were not unduly worried as he completed his vows, for though his final promise to his wife was to "remove this rock that holds me down and never again wear it, as your love is all I need to keep me rooted here", none imagined that anything would arise from his joining them in the rational world. They watched as with great ceremony he bent down and, with his bare hands, snapped the chain that bound his ankle to that rock, and they watched as he hurled the boulder into the river. They were still watching as he began to float upwards, towards the sun. Well, he didn't so much float away as fall upwards, as though gravity worked in reverse on him.
The menfolk blinked and the womenfolk wailed, and Martha Garvey née Pitwater dissolved into a cataract of tears before them. And though the wedding buffet was devoured - for after all, there is never any sense in wasting food - it was consumed in silence and with a solemnity never before seen in that part of the country.
Phillipsburg was never quite the same after that. Tethered John's rock was salvaged from the river, moved to the town square and mounted on a sturdy plinth, and Martha spent the rest of her days as a crow watching an empty sky. John never did return.
I suppose that's why I've never dared break the chains connecting me to my rock.
It lay by his bed as he slept, it sat under the table at his feet like a dog as he ate. It dragged behind him as he fought the mosquitoes for the right to work the land in the dust bowl. And his muscles grew and grew.
He was well-liked by the people of Phillipsburg. Tethered John, they called him. It didn't bother them that he believed he would float away if he ever became detached from his rock; he was a solid guy, a dependable guy. He rebuilt the church nigh on single-handedly after the storm of '52. Streamers of laughing children unfurled behind his decrepit pick-up truck as it stuttered into town belching smoke, and they followed him to the grocery store begging him to tell them the stories again, just one more time, and they listened wide-eyed as he told of how he uprooted a tree with his bare hands, how he pushed a stubborn cow into a field, how he hauled the Partons's jalopy out of the ditch. And when he announced his wedding to his fiancée Martha Pitwater, the whole town smiled for him.
So the guests standing in the field at his wedding, these fine people of Phillipsburg, were not unduly worried as he completed his vows, for though his final promise to his wife was to "remove this rock that holds me down and never again wear it, as your love is all I need to keep me rooted here", none imagined that anything would arise from his joining them in the rational world. They watched as with great ceremony he bent down and, with his bare hands, snapped the chain that bound his ankle to that rock, and they watched as he hurled the boulder into the river. They were still watching as he began to float upwards, towards the sun. Well, he didn't so much float away as fall upwards, as though gravity worked in reverse on him.
The menfolk blinked and the womenfolk wailed, and Martha Garvey née Pitwater dissolved into a cataract of tears before them. And though the wedding buffet was devoured - for after all, there is never any sense in wasting food - it was consumed in silence and with a solemnity never before seen in that part of the country.
Phillipsburg was never quite the same after that. Tethered John's rock was salvaged from the river, moved to the town square and mounted on a sturdy plinth, and Martha spent the rest of her days as a crow watching an empty sky. John never did return.
I suppose that's why I've never dared break the chains connecting me to my rock.
posted by Ecks Ridgehead at
12/13/2005 10:59:00 am
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