February is the Cruelest Month

Note: A couple years back we had one of those winters that decided to start some time around Labor Day. For all that is holy, September is supposed to be spent with the withering soft reminders of summer, cooled around the edges but at its core a soothing season. By January, the taste of summer; of comfortably sitting outside, about wanting to do anything in the grasp of the elements is a dim memory, not quite real, like two generations removed from moon landings, it goes from fondly recalled to suspected hallucination. We'd been duped! Summer never really existed at all!
And to all of this I came to the conclusion that February is the cruelest month of all (*all due respect to T.S. Eliot...). I'm not the first, won't be the last, but it was my conclusion to make. When the relentless beating gets to its most dour. Grayness. Absolute relentless. Grayness.
This was written deep in that mindset.

“February is the Cruelest Month”
Cay was not the first one who would fall at the hands of my stroke, but perhaps the one with the least prior knowledge of the inevitable coup de grace. February was the cruelest month of all. Darkness wallows in a cold lifeless grey that reaches the point of interminable length and indeterminable conclusion. Spokes and ash and the clutter of frozen words through fogged breaths hanging clinging to a thick stank air and not so much falling as congealing and forming an unrecognizable lump suspended aloft for there is no sense in untangling the meaning until after the defrost. Defrost, defog, defy the chapter of death and live to start anew.
Was that Cay, in a sort? A sacrifice to the cold chill in hopes of life renewed in the spring? Or just sport to take one’s mind off the slowing? Cold is, by definition, slowness. Molecules that slow their movement, thereby causing retraction, slowness and approaching death. At its essence it is a simple concept. Speed up and you live. Slow down and you die.
Cay and I had known each other since we were young, though I of course had a few years on him; he was always pushing ahead pushing forward. Cay was a strange bird, half a mix of unbridled scattered whims of ambition and half beholden to the constraints of mystics. But Cay forged ahead as if contradiction could be strength and became very popular. We had cliques and we had friends and Cay seemed to find his way into both and claim all he chose as his own. “The best days lie ahead,” he would say to me with a fool’s sense of bluster and optimism, and give me a smile and a pat. I found the talk curious since, in Cay’s life, the best days obviously exist in the here and now, so why choose to wish for better and not simply for the status quo? A better day would be a changed day, and a changed day could be in a world where his lot was not the king of the mountain. Yes, Cay was king, from the classroom to the dorm to the field.
“Yes indeed.” I would respond. For I knew that surely my own struggles illustrated that the best days were not here now, and rather in some distant future the day would dawn where Cay would have to feel the same pathos of unfulfilled dreams and uninspiring drudgery, in effect, to feel what everyone else feels. There were no Februaries in Cay’s calendar; there were no long dormant winters. There were no endless chasms.
As years passed slowly in the moment but swiftly in retrospect, my lot in the village was not prosperous and Cay had advanced from his throne of academia to a greater throne on the mountain of personal success. A fictitious place, where one is squired away to a false placement upon a shadow of tricks placed atop a perilous precipice. At the base of his liar’s paradise, a great many of us wallowed without success, shackled to our fates, and all no longer Cay’s equal, but begrudgingly his servants. His riches were shotgunned all over our defenseless beings and we worked not for our own betterment, but for Cay. We worked year round, and for our own billowing ash of prosperity we toiled. But on the backs of this he prospered. He lived off the sweat of others - but never sweats.
I saw him the February before my first kill. “What’s the word on you?” He said; smile agape and with a bounced step that tried to tower over my larger frame.
“The word is chill. The cruelest month is upon us.”
“What ? February? February is the glorious road to spring. We shall soon be rejoicing in rebirth. This the cruelest month? If wine the cruelest drink.”
“The wine is for celebration of life. Nectar of death is consumed in February.”
“You amuse me sometimes, my old friend. You don’t see the horizon? You don’t see the bright sun shining in the distance, merrily making its way back to us? “
“I see the horizon, but it’s endless. Were I to see the spring then it would be the spring. Only a fool sees what isn’t there.”
He chuckled again; a laugh meant to show contempt towards others while placing a façade of wisdom upon himself. “You don’t see the need for the cold? To appreciate the warmth? We bask in both because they illuminate who we are.”
“Yes. Yes that I do believe it illuminates who we are.”
Murs had friends. He was friends with Crown, but Crown was friends with Cay and Cay was not friends with Murs and nobody was friends with anyone that Cay didn’t like.
Murs was a neighbor an occasional friend but those days had long passed. Now when we crossed each other on the roads it was with suspecting eyes and averted glances. Murs knew these streets and knew the desperate conniving that arises from fighting for the few crumbs that fell off the likes of Cay. In our village we were outsiders but within our closer community, the monochrome of our lives took on a varied assortment of hues.
“I want to speak with you this evening. Perhaps go someplace alone where we could talk.” I had presented this to Murs one day. His suspicion was evident in his expression but so was the sense of pre-defeat. Murs had no other option. I had grown strong on our street and Murs had not. His courting of others had worn thin and his arrogance on the street had become an empty boast. We walked along the riverside and chatted about where we had been. I felt power in knowing the inevitable conclusion and knowing I controlled it. This could be what Cay sees in February, I thought. But Cay does not control the seasons any more than he controls the climate, or controls me. I looked at Murs. I controlled my actions and if my actions were used to control Murs then I would control Murs. I would be power. And this would be the road toward power greater than Cay’s. Cay did not control the seasons, he abided by them. He in the end sought control over nothing. Then why the fear? Where was his power?
“February is a cruel month.” I told Murs.
He nodded. “They’re all cruel, though. We just think we have it better because the environment is nicer. But they are all cruel.” He looked back over at me.
I returned from the riverside but Murs did not.
The end for Cay came as a naturaul conclusion to a long series of unconnected events. Cay had friends, he was popular. He had been friends with Crown from a very young age, but Crown was sporadic. He lived like a comet – spending long periods of dormancy followed by a bright shooting glow - only to disappear once again into the ether. When Crown would go through fits of success, Cay was close to his side. Everyone asked Cay for wisdom, and Cay’s friends shut out Cay’s enemies.
But Cay had changed. “Let’s get together some time.” He would ask.
And we would. But you get tired of paying your boss’ way, of lending money up the line. I have nothing on my table. I live in a too small house, Cay does not. I work hard, Cay does not. I live by a set of guiding principles. I do not act on foolish impulse, I do not waste. I do not look at February as joy. I see and recognize the death. The cold. The suffering. Cay was now friends with everyone but few were friends with him.
He turned to me. Me of the set self-determination and stoic rules. When Cay needed to have his house repairs done, it was the craftsmanship of my work which he sought out. When he went to the village square for produce he could count on mine to be dependable and plentiful. And then he would buy my wares while berating my rigid ways, calling me too dull and too narrow focused. But yet, he would still buy my fruit. Where does he think this produce comes from? His home was not held together by him, he made no time to tend to it, and it was stitched together by the work of others.
But make no mistake, in the end it is not some jealousy that you may be inferring that resulted in me bringing about Cay’s demise. Sure, the taunts, the sideways glances, and the banishments work their slow twisted talons into the psyche over time. But my lines are too squarely drawn to allow that to bring me into actions which will not result in my best interest. With un-erring disciplined I had leveraged his weaknesses to create my own strength. What doomed Cay was that he no longer was useful. He no longer provided anything to the village, more so he became a drain. And drains must be stopped.
He agreed to meet me by the riverside. He used to never come by, but his visits had recently become more regular as he sought grandeur for his own standing. Yes, image a man like Cay coming to visit a man like me! But he had to. And now, I understood what I needed to do.
He greeted me with false warmth. “Look at you, my old friend. I used to say you would never change. But you have.”
“No Cay, I am who I always was. And you too, old and frail though younger than I, have also remained who you always were.”
“But look at what you have achieved.” He said. “Look around, you should feel good. You have changed. Yes, you’re still a man of flaws and vice. But you have…”and he paused briefly in reflection,“… I feel a bit of me has rubbed off on you. I have helped you become who you are.”
I recoiled from the thought, and dismissed it, knowing that in the next breath he would follow his empty platitudes with an outstretched hand. I stopped him.
“But, Cay, we are not alike. And I will show you by doing to you what you could never do to anyone.”
He smiled as he always does, perhaps half aware of my words but mind fully vested in preparing for his next spoken thought. As he inhaled to speak he made his choreographed eye contact, but became taken aback by what was returned his way. The eyes - my eyes - frightened him more than any act or words had ever done before. A drunk sobered by the vision of steel. He did not understand the meaning of the moment, but he did grasp its gravity.
“But why has it come to this rash crossroad, my old friend?” He was pleading not for the mercy of a handout but desperately for the mercy of life. “Don’t you see there’s room for everyone to succeed? My good fortune does not preclude yours. I am not a threat.”
Fine words from the man who wields power blindly and without any sense of proportion. A youth who doesn’t know that time is ultimately measured in years that dwarf a lifespan.
“You are always a threat. You cease to be necessary when you provide no value. You cease to be when your power can no longer stop mine.”
He looked at me again, clearly without understanding. Murs, like all the others, seemed to know at this point that the end was inevitable. And they understood and accepted. There was no such realization from the poor, pitiful, unsuspecting Cay. But he also did not understand that “poor” “pitiful” and “unsuspecting” just made him all the more expendable.
“February is the cruelest month.” I told him. And I returned from the riverside alone.