What would you do, if, as quick as a flash, reality as you knew it cleaved apart, revealing a bloody mess of muscle and tendon? What if the air opened up like a cut hand, and there was something behind it, writhing, screaming, trying to reach through to touch you? Would you want to look at it, touch it? Would you want to go to it? Or would you turn around, flatten your hands over your ears, and march into the first available building or vehicle? How superfluous, how unnecessary, to believe everything you saw with your own eyes. What was the point of cognition and discernment, if one could not choose one's own reality? How pathetic, to be only a passive receiver of the great unknown, and not the conqueror of it, either through explanation or flat-out rejection.
He listened with that same humble patience, the expression identical to when Near had explained gin to him. Jude had not known Courtland the way Near had, had not been his actual child. Whatever filial loyalty he felt towards the dead man paled in comparison to Near's passions. It was good and right that Jude cede to Near's experiences and opinions. It was just. He imagined the incidents Near spoke of, and his mind wandered through the rooms in smoky tendrils. Here, in the reading room, Courtland hefted that heavy volume. There, in the study, he beckoned the au pair with two fingers, his robe artfully arranged across his lap. He saw these things like he saw the winery down below, when, one night, the bottles had been moved aside, chairs had been arranged in a circle, and Jude had sat down with his sister, and looked up at Courtland Farr, and learned who he was.
"Alright. That's your choice." There was no fighting it. Near could only know what he was capable of knowing, and he was only capable of knowing what he wanted to know. Jude emerged from the other side of the bar, examining his oozing palm, and rounded Near like the rock of Gibraltar. "I'll wait until the rain stops, then I'll go." Tomorrow, this could all be a bad dream. Just a bad dream, on a dark and stormy night, with a mysterious stranger, and a bottle where blood was pressed into the glass.
He listened with that same humble patience, the expression identical to when Near had explained gin to him. Jude had not known Courtland the way Near had, had not been his actual child. Whatever filial loyalty he felt towards the dead man paled in comparison to Near's passions. It was good and right that Jude cede to Near's experiences and opinions. It was just. He imagined the incidents Near spoke of, and his mind wandered through the rooms in smoky tendrils. Here, in the reading room, Courtland hefted that heavy volume. There, in the study, he beckoned the au pair with two fingers, his robe artfully arranged across his lap. He saw these things like he saw the winery down below, when, one night, the bottles had been moved aside, chairs had been arranged in a circle, and Jude had sat down with his sister, and looked up at Courtland Farr, and learned who he was.
"Alright. That's your choice." There was no fighting it. Near could only know what he was capable of knowing, and he was only capable of knowing what he wanted to know. Jude emerged from the other side of the bar, examining his oozing palm, and rounded Near like the rock of Gibraltar. "I'll wait until the rain stops, then I'll go." Tomorrow, this could all be a bad dream. Just a bad dream, on a dark and stormy night, with a mysterious stranger, and a bottle where blood was pressed into the glass.