Keeper of the Fire
By Niall Twohig
My good friend Jay just released his collection of one thousand super-short stories. As you read these stories, you’ll see one man’s soul take shape, and you’ll see your own reflected back. To invite you in, I offer this essay I wrote about Jay followed by links to each book of a thousand stories.
The orange moon, shaped like a Faberge egg, looks as if it’s about to hatch and share some secret.
Three of us sit around the fire. It warms us enough so that we can tell stories and use imperfect metaphors to describe the Harvest Moon when we catch sight of it. We’ve been here before, manifold times, waiting for that secret.
The moon does not crack. Instead it gives us a great tidal clap. Then, stillness, complete stillness. Moon, ocean, cloud. All still, except for two of us.
Jeff and I are like kids seeing magic for the first time. While Jay keeps the fire, we stupidly run to the edge of the ocean and say things like “wait” and “did you hear that” and “look up” as if these words could turn the wide open secret into some thing to turn over in our fingers and tuck away in cages or wooden boxes.
Jeff and I laugh at ourselves, fools for trying to cage nothing and everything. It’s the kind of laughter that brings you back to the fire, a big old cosmic belly laugh that lets you sink into your skin again, which is after all, part of the secret.
We join Jay by the fire. Jeff lies on his side. I sit with legs crossed, trying to will away the last of my shivers.
Jay, of course, hasn’t moved from his original position. He effortlessly reclines on his elbows, his feet toward the fire. He’s hooded, so I can’t see his eyes. He’s relaxed, so I miss the ebb and flow of breath. The only sign of life comes when he discretely adjusts the hot wood coals with his stick. No motion wasted. The fire flickers up autumn colored patterns across our bodies.
At a point, the wind picks up and sends flames licking at Jay’s feet. Be careful, I say. Jeff says “wow, man!’ as if in agreement.
Jay assures us. I’m. Fine. His deep Long Island brogue stretches the words out so that I notice the valleys between the sounds as one does when hearing a bass-heavy Sutra.
Instead of cautioning him further, I chuckle. I tell him I’m reminded of a Chinese painting he recently sent me. The painting, still fresh in our minds, shows Lieh Tzu. With robes and beard caught in the wind, the monkish figure appears more a cloud than a solid person. What adds to this effect is the monk’s feet which, in contrast to the thick strokes of the cloud body, seem to dissolve into an ethereal white. It’s as if the monk no longer has a need for such earthbound appendages.
If Jay’s feet burn away tonight, I think, perhaps he no longer needs them. Perhaps it is time for him to be borne away from earth and fire as the cloud is borne off upon the wind. Lucky for us it’s not that time. The fire licks up in another direction, prodded away by a well-placed poke. Jay continues to keep the fire and the story begins.
How many times have the three of us been here? Manifold times, yet always the same: The Keeper and his fire. The Keeper and his friends. The Keeper and his stories which, like the stillness of the Harvest Moon night, hold wide open secrets.
On this very beach, the Montauk tribes, whose name lives on in this stolen land, once sat under the same orange harvest moon. They would take advantage of the peculiar tidal surge, that great clap, and the orange light to find crabs washed to the shore. Perhaps a few among them ran stupidly along the beach and tried to catch the night’s beauty in a net rather than the crabs. And perhaps one among them kept the fire going and lured the spellbound ones back with its warmth and his stories. And before him, there were other keepers and listeners by as many fires as there are stars.
On this night of the harvest moon, I see Jay in a constellation of those peers, most of whom are forgotten to time. He shares their eyes, twinkling eyes as old as stars, that look deep into the fire for bounty to bring back to those in the circle. Such keepers have always been as important as hunters and harvesters of food. They provide a sustenance for living as well as dying.
Tonight, I sit back and listen as Jay, our Keeper, tends the fire and shares his secrets. He outlines a massive story, one that could easily collapse upon its own weight, for it seems to hold the density of the cosmos. But I quickly dismiss all that. I know that, even as Jay speaks his mad thoughts, he will keep reaching, as he always has, deep into the fire until he pulls out a coal that conceals the ingot he knew was there. No doubt, he will be burned in the process, but he will come back bearing his novel. It’s the first time he’s used that word in all the years I’ve known him. He’s been careful not to use or abuse it, as many do. The first time he uses it, it seems more a world navel than novel.
No, I won’t play the Doubter tonight. Instead, I sit and listen, confident that I’m privy to the primordial and fiery beginnings of a novel that will one day have form. And if my confidence were to lapse—if I were to tell him he is crazy for reaching for the unreachable—he’d laugh his deep belly laugh. Then, months or years later, he would prove me the crazed one.
No, my role, in this our recurring game, is a different one.
At a point, Jay’s story is interrupted by those who cause the Keeper a good deal of anxiety: Strangers. In this case, four drunken rich folks from Westchester who aren’t dressed for the brisk autumn night. One carries a guitar he’s too timid to play. Another carries a single malt buried in too much ice. One woman is sloshed and tangled up in the false light of her Smart Phone. A second woman, whose smile tells me she’s part of our story, asks if they can share the fire.
There’s a second stillness, a pregnant moment.
I know these aren’t the people Jay wants to invite to the fire, nor are they the ones he wants to tell his story. Like all Keepers before him, he’s protective of what he has tended, the warmth and the stories he’s sharing with friends.
I know this. Yet still, I invite them in without hesitation. Sure. Sit. And share some of your whiskey! The words are drawn more from the book I’d been reading, Woody Guthrie’s Bound For Glory, than from any sense of good judgment.
Though Jay and Jeff may not see it, there is sound judgment in my words. They contain a secret that needs repeating to the Keeper and to you, the other strangers, who have picked up his novel. The secret is this:
Fires, like stories and smiles, ain’t scarce resources, as Woody might say. If a person asks to share your fire, then invite them in, especially if one stranger has a warm smile and another good whiskey. The story can wait. Anyway, such meetings are part of it all. The night of the orange moon wouldn’t be complete—the story wouldn’t be complete—without a moment when what is familiar converges with what is unfamiliar and, for a fleeting moment, the two move within the same secret.
On this night, the night of the orange harvest moon, fire flickers across seven faces, two of them familiar, four of them strange, all momentarily one. Though the ice never breaks, we share some laughs, most at the expense of the shy guitar player, the woman locked in her phone, and the fellow who buries good scotch in ice.
At a point, the girl with the warm smile laughs at Jay’s jokes. She’s keyed into his tricky humor, which doesn’t rub many people the right way. On another night, in another life, she would listen whole-heartedly as Jay pulled his cosmology from fire and sent it sparkling into the heavens. But not tonight. The four strangers eventually move on, and we’re left to our fire. The three of us are tired. The time of storytelling has come to an end. But the story continues past the night, past our parting, and long after the ashes of our fire have scattered upon the wind. Jay will keep the story for another time.
a thousand stories
Book 1
Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
Book 5
Book 6
Book 7
Book 8
Book 9
Book 0
To find out more about Jay’s work visit: https://www.charybdispress.com/
