Sam Barkley Glimpses

[Sam Barkley]

Sam needed Glamour. He didn't need need it, except that in these dangerous times, finding yourself short on the ol' AquaVelvet could mean the difference between life and death. So, as far as that's concerned, yeah, he needed it. Starting fights in his own bar to Harvest wasn't the smartest option, and, to tell ya the truth, he was tired of pissing people off to steal their emotional energy. His new perspective caused him to stop and consider how his actions might have affected, y'know, their lives, and it gave him pause. No, there was another way to go about this, a purer way.

He'd have to venture into the Hedge and take it straight from the Vine.

And so Sam does, taking his staff along in case of danger as he leaves from his Hollow into the Hedge proper. The trail winds; the odd sunlight feels more like extremely bright flourescent lighting upon his bark; he gets that itchy feeling, underneath, that he can't scratch away. Goddam Fae.

After an hour's journey, though, who really knows how time goes in that place, he finds a herd of purple cartoon hippopotami feasting upon a crop of Goblin Fruit. They notice the Woodwalker's presence and roar, warning him off, but Sam will have none of it. He locates the biggest, angriest, scarred male in the pack, and proceeds to Crocodile Dundee Mind Trick the beast into letting him through. It looks confused by his demeanor at first, but after several tense moments, the creature lies down in submission, his herd following suit. Sam pats it on the head with a smile, reaches into the grove, and takes several fruits down, offering one to the hungry hippo, who happily munches on it. Barkley sits down beside and begins to eat.

Much better.

Dundee Mind Trick

[Sam Barkley]

Sam blinks. There are chickens in the tree. No, not him. That tree. Look up...up... Yes. You see? Chickens. What the hell? Nope. What the Hedge? Exactly.

They are green, yes, and they have fangs, yes, and they are up in a tree, yes, and they are hissing at him, but they are chickens all the same. Barkley has got to see this up close, for himself. He has to find out what they are doing up there. This is an exciting learning opportunity. So he ties the laces of his boot together, slings his staff across his back in the handy-dandy carrier he crafted, and climbs. And climbs. And climbs some more.

Fifteen minutes later, Sam is still climbing. He looks down. It wasn't this far when he started, but now the ground is looking like an awfully far fall. And the chickens keep hissing at him to go away. "Shut up, shut yer awful racket," he instructs, continuing towards them. "Yer gonna wake the Gentry, yeh damn eejits."

An hour later. The view down is similar to standing atop the Sears Tower at this point. But he's almost there. Almost. His own gnarled, bark covered hands are bleeding sap all over it, his clothes have tears in them, his muscles past fatigue. An' the chickens just get louder. One more boost, and he sees what he couldn't from the ground.

There are no chickens. Just oddly-shaped, hissing, moving leaves for a crazy ass tree. The ground is the same distance away he thought it had been when he started. Apparently the thing had just been trying to warn him off, and when that didn't work, it simply gave up.

"Yeh know, there's such a thing as fraternal solidarity, yeh great big jackass," he tells the Hedge tree as he lifts himself into its boughs and finds what the tree was so keen on protecting. Its eggs. Or seeds.

Whatever they were, they could use some pepper.

[Sam Barkley]

Sam roused himself from his treetop slumber just as the watchful eye of the Sun brought its light and heat and love and judgment to Sacramento once again and smiled warily at all these false promises before putting on his sunglasses. When the light faded again in time with the celestial design, wickedness would swiftly come in its place, ravaging the just, the meek, the weak, wholly undaunted in the absence of that bright, bright sentry. The Wizened had questions in his own, big ones, that he couldn't move past. What difference could one small, bitter, angry, stick-waving man truly make against the evil that filled until overflowing the hearts of men? What difference had Harry made?

A shot rings out of the silence, the boom of manufactured thunder destroying the silence of the preserved forest. It was followed by a whoop and holler, and just barely audible, a whinny and whimper. Sam, staff strapped to his back, is already shimmying down the tree that had been his bed. Unknown voices make their way through the aether to his stubby ears.

"Wooo-woo! You got 'em, I know ya' did! He was a big'un, what ya' think, ten pointer?" asked one, excited, sounding as though the speaker was practically hopping with anticipation.

"Twelve, I bet. Gonna look real good in the den," came another, calm, self-assured.

"Wooo, yeah! Sure is- err...hello?"

"'ullo."

"Uhhh...where'd you come from?"

"Not important."

"Uh-huh. Who are you?" The man pets the barrel of his lowered rifle, casually pointing out that he is armed with a deadly weapon. This makes Sam grin, an awful thing to be on the receiving end of.

"Now that is important, but not to likes of yew."

Sam hears the excited one whisper 'Ranger?' out of the corner of his ear. The big one shakes his head slightly.

"Now, see here- OW, DAMN!!!" The big one had made the mistake of trying to raise his rifle. End result- one disarmed man with three broken knuckles.

"No, yew see," Barkley growls, walking towards the man who used to have a gun and taking him by as close to the collar as the little man could reach. "I wouldn't, I really wouldn't," he warns, glancing sideways at the skinny one inching towards the gun, his staff flicking outward in the same direction and halting half-way. A lump goes down that one's throat and he backs away. "I won't have poachers," Sam says, the word pronounced with the affection we reserve for noon-sun manure on our dinner plates, "in my woods. Yeh want to hunt? Get out of the city. This is me bein' civil. Either a' yew yahoos step foot in my forest again, an' yeh'll be the hunted, instead. Got that?" he asks, nearly shaking with malevolence. There are murmurs that might sound as though they've answered affirmatively. Not good enough.

"I asked, 'Got that?'"

"Yes."

"What?"

"Yes, sir. We won't come to your woods again."

"No, yeh won't." Sam points at the rifle with his staff. "That's mine, now. Say it."

"Yes, sir. That's yours now."

"Now get the hell outta my sight."

The two poachers leave with their tails tucked. Sam goes to check on the buck. Bleeding and shivering in the dawn, its eyes see between the worlds of the living and the dead. "Damn," the Woodwalker laments, then raises his head to the sun and screams, "GODDAMMIT!" There was nothing he could do. He had failed to protect this denizen of his woods. Its death would be on his hands. "Go well, now. Plenty fillies on the other side, hey? An' cabbages." He sniffs a little and is glad for the privacy.

What difference had Harry made? No one knew...until the Ogre was gone.

Sam Barkley realizes then that he's been gone far too long.

[Sam Barkley]

Barkley sniffs at the pretty church, with its bright paint, manicured steeples and stained glass windows. No church ought to look so pretty, the Wizened felt deeply, it meant they were wasting the money they were given. A church ought to be just a great damn shack, or hell, a big old tent draped over a lawn. That's where the real religion was; this monstrosity was for those who gave lip service to the Lord, not those who needed Him desperately. He remembered his Revelations, the part where the Big Guy told all the big churches of the day that they sucked at bein' churches, and he felt that the Lord would have somethin' to say about this one. But that's not what I'm here for, Sam thought, it ain't even Sunday.

He followed the printed sheets of paper stuck on the walls for what he was here for. They led to the basement, out of the sight and mind of all the proper people that would fill the upstairs on the Sabbath. Ah, here we go, he thinks, pushing open the door. There were at least twenty people inside, all sitting in a circle. The meeting had already started, so Sam took one of the empty seats and listened quietly. People looked at him with pity and understanding, then turned back to the speaker. It was all Sam could do to restrain his laughter.

The crybaby standing and whining to everyone didn't look like he was anywhere near shutting up, and Sam's a busy little guy, so he pulled out his flask and gulped the bittersweet liquor down to speed things along. It had the desired effect.

"I'm sorry, Kevin, can you hold on for a minute- thanks. Sir? We don't allow drinking here." Twenty sets of eyes stared at him, hard, and the flask harder.

"No? Why in heavens not?" asked the little man, innocent and incredulous in the same breath.

"No, sir. This is an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting." He looked around, nodding, and getting some affirmative, and some rather unsure nods in reply.

"Yeh, so? Sam ken read." He thumbed toward the door, where the sign was tacked on.

"Sam? Ok, Sam. Uh..." the leader of the group needed a few seconds to get his bearings. "We're all in recovery here."

"Nay, that's not true. Thas what hospital are for."

The leader was feeling heated at this point, but was managing it well. "No, Sam. We're recovering in a different way. From the unmanageable mess our lives have become due to our addiction to alcohol." There were some murmurs of assent throughout the circle, like a halfhearted wave at a very tiny baseball game.

Sam snorted. "No, yer not, yeh filthy bunch of degenerates. An' I mean that in the best possible way," he says placatingly, spreading his hands wide to encompass all present. "Yer here cuz yer afraid, not cuz yeh want to recover. Yer afraid of losin' yer loved ones...yer health...yer sanity. Sam sez yeh need none of it. None of yez are dreamin' of crystal penthouses in the clouds, eh? Yeh don't want sumthin' better. Yeh want the bottle, fer as long as yeh ken have it. So take it!" To illustrate his point, Sam takes another, envied guzzle of the flask. "Be who ye are, an' no one else. Drink til yer full up, an then have another, cuz none of what yeh fear to lose is permanent. The end is nigh, an' its a far better thing to die in the gutter than in the closet. Be who yeh truly are, for as long as yer able."

Sam lets them chew on that for a minute. The room is absolutely, painfully silent as each man and woman searches their conscience and gauges the strength of their will. Now, it should be stressed that Barkley is not a good public speaker. He mumbles, ums and ahs, and the accent the Tiger gave him can be hard to decipher. His voice is not full of the confidence, but he speaks with the freedom of the damned, and his audience is only too eager to hear their own thoughts echoed out loud.

"I'm headed to Harry's Bar, down the street," the wee bushman says, standing up and walking toward the exit. "Who's comin' with me?" he calls over his shoulder.

One, then another, then more rise to follow.

"Wait for me," comes a weak voice, the group's deposed leader, as he grabs his jacket. Sam grins without turning around.

Throughout the night that follows, Sam tastes the emotion of his new Court for the first time, resignation. It lacks the heat he's become accustomed to, from Wrath, but it burns longer, deeper, and the Wizened savors every terrible drop.